3:49 Rather like buses, the meaty stuff in this conference came all at once in the closing session with seven strong panelists and the NYTimes' futurist-in-residence as moderator to boot. Any three of these speakers would've been a substantial panel.
We had Craig Newmark on why newspapers were just the precursor to the internet, and MIT Tech Review editor Jason Pontin on why he's decided that newspapers really are going to die.
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08:00 Craig Craigslist Newmark is one of the big draws today, though Craig very modestly wouldn't agree with that. Today he seemed more interested in the ducks on campus, and did he say an egret too? Craig's speaking in the closing session on the future for all this media, democracy and community stuff, so more on that later this afternoon.
Yesterday's coverage is all in the post I continued long after you'd all left the office, but that's east coast time for you.
10:13 Real-life gen-next young people
A panel of students aged between 19-24 talked about their use of technology in the opening session today. These type of panels are always interesting but the guinea pig factor is a bit strange. Are these young people particularly representative? I don't know. But they were quite lively anyway.
Is the MySpace becoming the new focus of peer pressure? John Fischer said that the discussion about social nets is becoming less about who knows how to use them and more about the social etiquette of knowing how often to comment and what kind of style to write in.
He also described a "digital aura", as if you have to behave as if you are being videotaped all the time.
"Are you aware that your MySpace page will be looked at when you go for a job interview? Well in five years that will be much worse - all the information you put online will be accessed. You have to do your own PR."
Facebook is seen as more trustworthy and secure than MySpace, though Alexis Morton said it wasn't long ago that her friends were all using Xenga and LiveJournal instead so these trends move quickly.
Zena Stephens said she has seven social net accounts and uses them for different functions including Facebook for events, MySpace for socialising and Hi5 for her family.
They navigate the huge amount of information on these sites by going to people and places they know and trust, so for music they would go to someone who they knew would know "where it's at".
Only old people use email?
A couple of questions from the audience seemed to make assumptions that "old" people use email and only "old" people can afford the best mobile phones.
At least one of the panel used a Blackberry and all of them used email.
"But we don't want Trios and Blackberrys because that's admitting our inexticable foray into adult life," said Fischer.
We don't read newspapers
Eddie Ramos said he started watching news under duress because of a college project, but the habit stuck.
"It has become a priority to find out what's going on and how I can educate other people in my school. Very few other people in my school that watch news."
Alexis said she never reads newspapers and probably never will. "I don't have more than two friends that read newspapers. If I wanted news I'd go online or watch TV, but if there's something really important, MySpace or Facebook is the last place I'd look because it's mostly teenagers that post there."
11:03 How the New York Times' futurist sees the world in 2010
Michael Rogers opened the "future session". He has the remarkable title of futurist-in-residence at the New York Times, and his job is to look 18 months to two years ahead of the business units to try to help them set goals.
"It's not so much about predicting the future, it's more about starting a dialogue about the the future might be like. Simply the fact that you're engaging in discussion means you are thinking about the future."
He made five predictions for the next few years:
- An explosion of mobile devices that are somewhere between smart phones and laptops. Laptops already outsell desktops in the US.
- What will connect those devices? We'll see an explosion of wireless connectivity and a number of devices that will compete through those networks. Fast, everywhere and always on.
- A major shift will be when the millennial generation, the 10-30 year olds, become the dominant generation, start families and home-owning. The younger end of this generation have grown up with social nets and these will become part of their daily social and professional lives.
- Big media is catching on really fast and they will adapt social net tools for their own brands. "Reporters didn't get to be reporters by ignoring reality. We're all these conferences and we're all listening."
- Identity will develop hugely, so we'll see an end to registration and a kind of clustered ID that we take from site to site.
11:23 Craig Newmark: The newspaper is the precursor to the internet
Craig "Craigslist" Newmark gave us a recap of early bloggers, Thomas Paine and John Locke included, to illustrate that technology and the internet is just a means to an end. They caused their own "paradigm shift"- just one example of how mass media is part of an historical process.
"Everyday I see what some call the wisdom of crowds, but the down side to that is that there can be mob rule, or panic, or low-quality information so what you need on top of that is another layer - the editors."
He said the blogging model is exciting but it generally means speaking the truth and checking later. Professional journalists do the fact-checking first.
As for print newspapers, that has been a comfortable medium, but even New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger said the newspaper may be on its way out, and could become just a luxury product. It may just have been the precursor to the internet.
12:07 Are blogs really that important?
John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, gave some stats that showed the different view of the media inside and outside the industry.
- Only 27% of the public said they were satisfied with the news but 76% of people inside it are satisfied.
- Only 12% of the public read newspapers but 26% of the industry reads them.
- 32% of the public get their news from Tv but only 5% of the media does.
- 40% of the public gets their news form the internet but 60% of the media industry does.
- Just over half the public said blogs are important but 86% of the media said they are.
A rather odd admission for a pollster, but he said he's generally wrong so his predictions would just be for entertainment. He reckons on more and more blogs: "We'll reach a new principle in the democratic experience - one man, one blog."
12:45 Editors will be your favourite "bartenders"
Jason Pontin, editor of the MIT technology review, was almost too interesting. He predicted:
Augmented reality. The idea is about combining the virtual internet world with the real world. Nokia has already experimented in this area.
The death of print. After some deliberation, Pontin has now decided that the printed form of news will die, although he emphasised that the role of the editor will remain crucial. He referred to E Ink's electronic paper which will have all the form factor benefits of newspaper. Sony ships something similar this year, although I doubt electronic paper will be enough to convert those hardened print hacks who are still addicted to their olfactory implants of toxic black ink.
Print, he said, is in its last 10 or 20 years.
"Forums are wonderful and the web advocacy groups are right, but there is still an important role for editors. I don't mean as gatekeepers, but more like bartenders at a favourite bar. You expect a certain kind of experience, standards of ideas and identity and you trust them. That won't go anywhere any time soon. This new content is supplemental to our jobs.
YouTube hasn't become a journalistic medium so far because content needs packaging more neatly. He referred to SplashCast, which allows users to create the right kind of packages and said the rise of these services, combined with effective video search, will drive web video and citizen journalism news.
Lastly, he said technology is great but expensive, and we need a way to bring this technology to the wider world.
12:55 We found our town hall online
We had a lone voice from a grassroots, hyper-local citizen journalism site in the form of Mel Graykin, one of the editors on the Deerfield Forum. The site is one of the beneficiaries of a citizen journalism grant from J-Lab's New Voices project.
"This is a newspaper and follows that old tradition. It's community based and serves that small community, and is vital," she said.
She said big media doesn't help them find stories or pursue issues, and local media isn't interested either. But by engaging with issues that concern their small town, they have encouraged more people to run for office and generated more interest in what is going on in the community.
"I hope that other communities in the country are going to do the same thing and help preserve that kind of traditional democracy," she said.
"We lost our town hall and found it online."
3:49 More snippets from WeMedia
- The Knight foundation announced a $10m contribution towards the creation of a new centre for international journalism and new media at the University of Miami, hosts of this conference. Knight Foundation president and CEO Alberto Ibarguen said the centre would focus particularly on visual media in the form of film, video and photo journalism. "We'll focus on all media to try to bridge the kinds of cultural divides we have in the world today."
- Last night (during the mojito cocktail reception - hence lots of background conversations...) one presentation included fairly extensive clips featuring Christine Gambito, the Happy Slip video blogger. As far as I could make out, she's a wannabe actress who's using the web to try and get noticed. It grated rather - until she sang a customised version of James Blunt's Beautiful which involved her crooning over a 24" Mac screen. Well it struck a chord with me anyway...
