Well, sorry there everyone --- I went to lunch and missed the first part of the afternoon session. Unfortunately it wasn't because I was troughing my way through a bucket of food but because I *splutter* had other work to do.
Anyway: I've missed two instalments so far - one seemingly very interesting discussion on Middle Eastern media, and a second from pointyhead Jeffrey Sachs.
But what else is on the menu?
Now we're off to look at some voices from the African media and new media sphere.
Incidentally, each panel discussion is brought in with a slideshow of Reuters pictures, usually focusing on death, disease, famine, war etc - whatever's dramatic. What would they characterise the west with, I wonder?
Oop, I'm not the only one.
Wilfred Kiboro, an African news exec, gets riled up about the continued stereotyping of Africa. I've lived in Kenya all my life, he says, but I don't recognise the country you're describing. We have 55 different countries in Africa, hundreds of ethnic communities, but people turn up and talk about Africa as if they're talking about France, Luxembourg, Switzerland etc.
How's that for a stunning piece of prescience from me, eh? Chalk one up.
Ory Okolloh, a Kenyan blogger, comes in via satellite. Our concern is that our stories weren't being captured well by international media or domestic media - but rather than complain about the coverage we're not getting, I challenge people to tell their stories.
Matthew Buckland, Mail & Guardian Online, echoes Wilfred's points and notes that people get paid to write stories at Reporter.co.za; there is a thriving online community, but there still is a problem with internet access.
The chair of this panel, Rachel Rawlins, points out that western media treats Zambia like a basket case - a failed state, at the bottom of the heap - and yet the second newspaper to go online in Africa was one in Zambia. We're talking about the way the (westernised media) world views other nations.
How much time and money should we spend on connectivity when there? Ory Okolloh calls it "crap" that we shouldn't spend money on one thing because we have other problems. Matthew Buckland: connectivity is vital - whenever George Bush or Tony Blair sneezes, the world's media is on it. In Rwanda, 800,000 people are killed and all we hear is tumbleweed rolling down the corridor. If people are connected, they can get the message out.
David Dunkley Gyimah comes along to explain exactly: give people the means, and they will report. He met TV reporters in Ghana who only had two cameras and one of them was seconded by the president. The answer? Give them the equipment, they can run things. Six videojournalists, he explains, ran an entire 24 hour news channel. It's an action point.
Now we're onto meat and potatoes stuff that I think quite a few people have been waiting for: all the talk about money. This panel (the penultimate one, thankgoodness) features Rafat Ali (paidContent), Sebastian Grigg (Goldman Sachs), Carolyn McCall (Guardian), Shoba Purushothaman (TheNewsMarket), Dave Sifry (Technorati) and Chris Ahearn (Reuters Media).
Stephanie Flanders, moderating the panel: what is the business model for all of this?
Carolyn McCall - the challenges are very well documented, how do you cope with change and with investing in that change? Chris Ahearn says it's much ado about nothing. There are plenty of ways you can make money; taxes (BBC), advertising or subscriptions. The new new media is the old old media in a different form. How does the audience help us tell a story better? People who create content will be paid over time.
Rafat Ali, you can make people change their mindset by making them blog as part of the job (HELLO!) or go the lower-risk way of helping blogs grow. The weakest link in the chain is the individual journalist: they have to become open. Try and work at one tenth of the cost of what you used to: do more work at less cost.
Who pays for the fact checkers, the lawyers, says Stephanie Flanders? Chris Ahearn says we piss away money on technologies that startups would scoff at. Carolyn McCall says 40% of a print operation's cost is on the physical process of printing. Shoba Purushothaman believes the cost of newsgathering is increasing fast, and they talk a lot about trust but does anyone apart from investors really care about trust? Getting global domination has never been cheaper, but retaining it has never been more expensive.
Sebastien Grigg points out how old many media businesses are, but nobody has any idea where we're headed. Investors don't have any certainty either, but this problem has been going for a number of years. Dave Sifry: the reality is that there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and questions about who will make money. He plays a video - "Day of the Long Tail" - about how consumers are now very powerful. Very droll, Dave. Look at the core trends that are unstoppable, he says: on one side, adoption of broadband and mobile continues to increase, and on the other the ease of tools to make people producers as well as consumers. Then he trots out a line from web wonks the Cluetrain Manifesto about "consumers who eat content and crap cash"... (but he doesn't attribute it).
Now come on - some nitty gritty people. How do you make money out of this stuff? Shoba says we don't need to - there are tons of people prepared to do it for free. Dave Sifry points to small groups of bloggers who federate and co-operate to create advertising networks. And, he notes, the indirect revenues - people using the net to show off their portfolios, get consulting jobs and build their own personal brands - is far bigger than traditional revenue, but unrecorded.
Carolyn McCall: there are issues with established brands, legal issues etceterararara. Rafat: you just have to get the story right.
This is quickly swerving off the original premise and back towards a general discussion about the value of blogs (yawn). It's certainly more invigorating than yesterday's snoozefest, but talk about making money has disappeared.
Questions from the audience: What do we do about advertising? People can steal stuff if they don't like the way they're being advertised to or sold to. Where is the thinking going?
Sebastien Goldman Sachs: advertising needs massive audiences. That's changing online, but not fast enough. Rafat Paidcontent: it's not necessarily a scale game; I don't need five times the audience. McCall: small audiences can be very valuable. Nods of agreement, but not from Goldman Sachs.
Mike Butcher wonders whether it's technology companies, not media companies who will really make money from the future. Middle-sized media firms could struggle, says Shoba - but everybody thinks they are in the media business these days.
Last word to Dave Sifry - I hope we can finally put to bed this whole discussion of journalist versus blogger. The audience, bored of hearing this argument time and time again, applauds.
Moving on, the final session of the afternoon is going to be a "call to action" from Media Center, who put the whole thing together. Apologies to the organisers, but I'm going off to see what else is going on outside. Thanks for reading.
