Jul/100
The blog, the MA and the future
This blog has been neglected. There, i said it. Call the Blog Protection Services and i might lose custody. The problem is that i have a reason for that. Several, in fact, but these are the ones that matter, and most of them sound so lame i won’t even bother to list them, like “time” or “i needed a break” or a “fresh perspective”.
As you may know, i’ve been doing the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University, under the guidance of Paul Bradshaw, for the last nine months. Best thing i ever done in my life: not only i got to learn with one of the best minds in online journalism, but i also had a great time living in a foreign country, a first for me. It wasn’t a life changing experience or anything like that, but it ‘s damn close. Now that i’m back in Portugal i’m slowly recognizing the effects it had on me, and i’m in what i call a “hangover period”. You know, you wake up a bit disoriented, and wonder about what you’ve done the night before? No regrets in my case though.
But since i was busy as hell, i put the blog aside for too long. I have a list of posts i want to write, and i’m starting to work on them this week. I have stuff waiting to be posted since last year, but now i know how to do it better. So pay attention to the forthcoming posts, i’m back.
Meanwhile, i was doing this MA like i said. I still have one project to do during the Summer, and i’ll talk about it here soon, but you can take a look at what i’ve done in the last six months in this blog post Paul wrote about the assignments and experiments me and my colleagues did.A timeline, the spontaneous online coverage of the Madeira floods, a multimedia project, those were some of my relevant efforts.
I’m proud of mine – though i think i could have done so much better - but my colleagues were great. Read the whole series of posts so you can have an idea of what we were doing. We got in touch with amazing people, and though sometimes the brits seem hard to reach, i met some of the nicest people ever related to journalism. Maybe i was lucky, maybe they were just polite, but what a difference! The small country blues hit me hard sometimes, but then i also realized that in Portugal we are not behind anyone, we have incredible people working in journalism and new media, the problem is that we don’t have many chances to grow. Well, we do, but no entrepreneurial attitude (i had a class on that), fortunately some people don’t think that way. But that’s for another post.
Anyway, i’m on a break now, doing this course in Porto, and then i’ll be working on my Summer project for the MA. And afterwards i may have a job that allows me to do lots of stuff on the side, and push the boundaries of journalism a little further. I have lots of ideas, so all i have to do is work on them, no matter if i stay here or change countries again.
The future is now, and there’s no better place than that.
PS: by the way, the reason why i’m writing english only posts is that writing both in portuguese and english is time-consuming and i’m a bit late, but i’ll try to go back to dual language soon.
Apr/100
Information is free. Experience and context are money.
All in? I don't think so...
If you are reading this via RSS go to the real post to enjoy its full effect. There’s free beer.
This has been in everyone’s mind: how to make journalism a profitable business? Ads, paywalls, premium and freemium contents, there have been many options, but none seems to be working. Murdoch builds walls while others
Recently Johnston Press decided to give up their paywall since the subscription numbers were appalling, in the single or low double digits.
The stakes are high, and yet everyone is showing how bad poker players they are, going all in when they don’t have to.
The biggest problem is that there aren’t many users willing to pay for information they know they can get for free someplace else or that is not important for them. I’m not, for sure. Besides, most of the content news websites have to offer could be in print and my experience as a news consumer would be exactly the same, so why bother? So, how to keep those who want the free stuff, but how to profit from the content generated by journalists?
Imagine that you own a news content production company, and you have a team of talented people who can make good journalism, using
Exhibit A
Imagine you have those people willing to engage and participate with the community, not only to dig for stories or disseminate their work, but to enrich the community member’s experience with information about the process, or
- information
I think that transparency and time are two valuable items, and that time is the most valuable of them. Communities are part of the newsrooms’ life whether we like it or not, both in the construction and the distribution process. Journalists are the quarterback/midfielder (choose metaphor according to origin) of the news process, receiving the ball and creating options and deciding part of its course, although when it’s out of its hands/feet they should still be focused on the game but let the ball go. The rest of the team is community and the goal is to inform, and like in a real game there are less players than passive audience. I’m still working on this specific metaphor.
Still, people would be part of it, pitch their own stories, creating a crowdsourced model within a traditional news structure.
Imagine you have tools that allow you to add context or media or extra information like raw bulks of data and that your reporters know how to build an online article with all its basic features but also with extra content that enriches the knowledge and experience of the user, using your own archives, other people’s archives, other websites that you found relevant to the story, ongoing conversations on Twitter and Facebook, ;
Imagine that. And think how you can do all of those things, with the same time, trained to deliver the basic and the ultimate news content. And consider to make some of that ultimate content available for free, just like the basic takeaway content you have. And ask people to pay a fee for the rest, and allow them to embed videos, slideshows, audio in their own websites, and help them look cool in their community because you create cool content. You don’t need to charge much because you are building a brand. The light bulb was sold below production price in the beginning because it was something everyone would use, and after a while, production costs lowered because there was a lot of demand, and then there was profit.
So this is how I perceive the future of the business will be, a mix between several models, that favors smaller endeavors than juggernauts, and based on quality and engagement, and new ways to create traditional content, in a contextualized way.
So, a rough example would be:
mock news picture
tell if the situation is still ongoing and you can read more about it here (linked to related article) or it had a previous related event to which we will also link to or show the related media, or even better a timeline of the events
specific details, more pictures, detailed info, background info where , who was involved,
yes free yourself! and a basic WHY (that could be expanded to whatever you’d like). If it looks short to you, well, most of the info people read out of articles is all in the first paragraphs, where the w’s and h are.
yes free yourself! People would have to pay for the contextual information in the expandable items. This doesn’t mean the free content would be poor, but that the extended content would be really rich.
I confess this is inspired/stolen from Kevin Sablan’s post, and he says context is personal. I say it’s valuable, and providing an experience through information is profitable. It is technically possible and with better results than i presented, and when you have algorithms gathering and producing readable information, it is wise to reconsider the whole news process, how information is collected, analyzed, produced and distributed, and do it in a way people can use it and be willing to pay for at the same time.
Did you clicked in all the links in this post? Why would you? And if you did, how different was your experience? Are you going back to click a few? I know you will now.
So, what do you think?
Dec/093
Looking back, looking forward | Olhar para trás, ver em frente
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This is the time of the year where we look back and see how much we have accomplished, and where we are headed, or, at least, when we try to set a route for the next times. I always do that, but nowadays i’m basically going with the flow. Less talking, more doing, that has been my mantra. But since i did a lot of talking (blogging) before about journalism, i wanted to recover a blog post i wrote 20 months ago. I think i wasn’t that far off from the truth, since i’ve been reading a lot of posts from smarter people than i am saying pretty much the same. Here’s a summary: “There are five keypoints where changes must occur. Maybe there are more, but i’ll leave the others to you: Method -> newspapers need to change the way news are gathered and presented; Posture -> newspapers must change their editorial guidelines; Involvement -> newspapers need to interact with the audience, not only regarding them as users or readers, but as people; Investment -> newspapers need to spend money to make money, and charge less to more; Technology -> use technology to make better, faster, unique;” It’s newspaper oriented, but i guess it applies to any medium. Read the whole thing and let me know where i got it right and wrong. Meanwhile, i’ll keep meditating on the path that led me where i am now, a small break for breath on the side of the road. I’ll resume my voyage soon. Happy New Year. |
Esta é aquela altura do ano em que olhamos patra trás e vemos o que conseguimos fazer, e para onde vamos, ou, pelo menos, tentamos estabelecer uma rota para os tempos mais próximos. Eu faço sempre isso, mas hoje em dia ando ao sabor da corrente. Falar menos, fazer mais é o meu mantra actual. Mas já que falei (bloguei) muito antes sobre jornalismo, queria recuperar um post que escrevi há 20 meses atrás. Penso que não estava assim tão longe da verdade, já que tenho lido muitos posts de gente mais inteligente que eu a dizer o mesmo. Aqui fica um pequeno sumário: “Existem cinco pontos-chave onde são necessárias mudanças. Talvez hajam mais, mas vou deixar as outras sugestões para vocês: Método -> Os jornais precisam de alterar a forma como recolhem e apresentam as notícias; Postura -> Os jornais precisam de alterar as suas linhas editoriais; Envolvimento -> Os jornais precisam de interagir com os seus leitores, não olhando para eles como utilizadores mas como pessoas; Investimento -> Os jornais precisam de gastar dinheiro para fazer dinheiro,e cobrar menos a mais; Tecnologia-> Os jornais têm que recorrer à tecnologia para fazer melhor, mais rápido e único;” É sobre jornais, mas acho que se aplica a qualquer meio. Leiam o texto por inteiro e digam-me onde é que acertei e errei. Entretanto, vou continuar a reflectir no caminho que me trouxe até onde estou agora, uma pequena pausa para ganhar fôlego à beira da estrada. Volto a fazer-me ao caminho em breve. Feliz Ano Novo.
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Sep/092
(The Future of) Journalism in Portugal conference | (O Futuro do) Jornalismo em Portugal
Video: Comunicamos
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If you are in the vicinity of Carregal do Sal and if you would like to join the debate around Journalism in Portugal, then you should attend the conference organized by the Rascunhos school newspaper. A high school newspaper! The organizers, as you can see in the video above, are young, but eager to discuss journalism and present their project. Ricardo Sousa, the smart fellow on the left, invited me a few weeks ago to participate, but i had to decline, and now i feel sorry for it because it looks like it’s going to be good. I was impressed with Ricardo then, when we exchanged emails, but after watching the video i am even more. This guy is going places. I don’t know his partner in the event, Romina Santos, but i know that their team effort will be fruitful, and i can’t express how much i admire them for doing this. They’ll be having from young journalists to journalism teachers, to experienced reporters and newspaper board members. And they’ll take the chance to present the brand new edition of their school newspaper. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and i will have to watch the video stream to compensate the fact i won’t be there. But i feel good knowing that there are kids willing to do stuff, and get into the debate. The future looks brighter this way.
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Se estiverem por perto de Carregal do Sal e quiserem entrar num debate sobre o Jornalismo em Portugal, então devem ir à conferência organizada pelo jornal Rascunhos. Um jornal de uma escola secundária! Os organizadores, como podem ver no video acima, são novos mas impacientes por discutir o Jornalismo e apresentar o seu projecto. Ricardo Sousa, o rapaz inteligente do lado esquerdo, convidou-me há umas semanas para o painel, mas tive que recusar, e agora lamento não poder ir, porque parece-me que vai ser bom. Fiquei impressionado com o Ricardo na altura, enquanto trocávamos emails, mas depois de ver o video fiquei ainda mais. Este miúdo vai chegar longe. Não conheço a colega dele, a Romina Santos, mas tenho a certeza que o seu trabalho de equipa irá dar resultados, e não consigo expressar o quanto os admiro por fazerem isto. Eles vão receber desde jovens jornalistas a professores de jornalismo, de repórteres experientes a directores adjuntos de jornais. E vão aproveitar a oportunidade para apresentar o seu jornal de escola, novinho em folha. Soa-me que vai ser divertido, e vou ter que seguir pelo stream de video para compensar a minha falta de comparência. Mas sinto-me bem sabendo que há miúdos com vontade de fazer coisas, e entrarem na discussão. O futuro parece mais brilhante assim. |
JORNALISMO EM PORTUGAL- Debate e apresentação jornal Rascunhos, 11 de Setembro 2009
Programa do Dia:
14h00min – Abertura Solene da Cerimónia
- Intervenção do Presidente da Câmara Municipal de Carregal do Sal, Atílio dos Santos Nunes
- Intervenção do Director do Rascunhos e Director da ESCSAL, Prof. Hermínio Marques
- Intervenção da Co-Editora Principal do Rascunhos, Romina Santos
14h20min – Ínicio da Sessão de Palestras
- “Um Jornal Escolar no Século XXI. Como? – Apresentação do Jornal”, Ricardo Sousa – 15 minutos
- “Como se faz um bom Jornal?”, João Simão – 30 minutos
- “Comunicação Oral Começa nas Escolas”, Carla Marques – 30 minutos
- “Ética no Jornalismo”, Daniel Ricardo – 20 minutos
16h00min – Ínicio do Debate “Jornalismo em Portugal”
- Paulo Querido, via Skype, Jornalista Freelance Multimédia
- Vanessa Quitério, no local, Estudante de Jornalismo / Estagiária
- Paulo Ferreira, no local, Jornalista, Editor Adjunto do Jornal Público
- Bruno Faria, no local, Jornalista, Repórter para o “Jornal i”
- Daniel Ricardo, no local, Jornalista, Editor Executivo da Visão
- João Simão, no local, Professor de Jornalismo, Editor da UTADtv
- Ainda em aberto a possibilidade de participação do Director do Diário de Notícias
moderam Ricardo Sousa e Rita Ferreira, Jornal Rascunhos.
18h15min – Final Oficial do Debate. Nota de Encerramento
Agradece a Presença e Fecha a Sessão:
- Ricardo Sousa, Co-Editor Principal Jornal Rascunhos
