A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste – Taking Back New Media
What happened? Why YouTube and not ABC, CBS, or NBC? Why is Google the world’s largest advertising agency (market cap of $137.70B) over 13 times bigger than WPP (market cap $10.47B)? Why with a billion downloads is iTunes killing every other record labels? Why do newspaper publishers seem like the blacksmiths of the information age? And why is Facebook Generation Next’s favorite book -- that they don’t even have to buy?
I have been thinking about it all during the holiday break as I have watched traditional media players implode (check out my delicious on Media Downturn for the articles -- http://delicious.com/sshamp/mediadownturn). Old media had the experience and expertise. It should have provided the pathfinders in this new media wilderness. But instead of writing their shareholders about their successes, old media titans are signing pink slips. And the new media moguls care more about Charlie the Unicorn (33 million views, go figure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus) than community responsibility.
As the students we handed mass communication degrees report back being laid-off, I wonder if I/we have done a good enough job as a media educator(s).
We didn’t focus enough on the technology. We believed that the content skills we taught our students would beat the channel savy technowledge start-ups offered. Sensible enough. People were still going to read, listen, and watch. The content production skills would be relevant no matter what the medium, right? Unfortunately, technology radically changed the patterns of consumption. Technological capability morphed traditional industry structure into something today’s media professionals barely recognize.
We teach our students to be great videographers. But one kid with camcorder in the back of an auditorium tapes a guy dancing and over 100 million people watch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg) – that is more viewers than last year’s Superbowl. Newspaper layout is meaningless when RSS feeds bring us news from every newspaper we don’t want to subscribe to in a single browser window. Google takes ad buying to eBay with automated bidding. Forget radio programming strategy. Pandora makes a radio channel just for me with just the type of music I want to hear – and it pushes it to my cell phone! And why worry about Nielsen ratings when the video I watch on my cell phone reports back exactly what I watch along with all my demographics.
The centrifugal force of technology change is spinning to the periphery the very skills we used to consider core. I am afraid our students are the best at what doesn’t matter anymore.
We nodded our head when told “the medium is the message,” but we didn’t really get it. Gutenberg started the whole mass communication thing by mastering the technology. But we forgot his lesson. Technology matters. And only those who understand the intricacies of the technology will be able to lead the companies making content in the future.
But a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So we are starting a discussion in the Grady College. How much and what type of technology do we need to teach our students? Tell us what you think.
I have been thinking about it all during the holiday break as I have watched traditional media players implode (check out my delicious on Media Downturn for the articles -- http://delicious.com/sshamp/mediadownturn). Old media had the experience and expertise. It should have provided the pathfinders in this new media wilderness. But instead of writing their shareholders about their successes, old media titans are signing pink slips. And the new media moguls care more about Charlie the Unicorn (33 million views, go figure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus) than community responsibility.
As the students we handed mass communication degrees report back being laid-off, I wonder if I/we have done a good enough job as a media educator(s).
We didn’t focus enough on the technology. We believed that the content skills we taught our students would beat the channel savy technowledge start-ups offered. Sensible enough. People were still going to read, listen, and watch. The content production skills would be relevant no matter what the medium, right? Unfortunately, technology radically changed the patterns of consumption. Technological capability morphed traditional industry structure into something today’s media professionals barely recognize.
We teach our students to be great videographers. But one kid with camcorder in the back of an auditorium tapes a guy dancing and over 100 million people watch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg) – that is more viewers than last year’s Superbowl. Newspaper layout is meaningless when RSS feeds bring us news from every newspaper we don’t want to subscribe to in a single browser window. Google takes ad buying to eBay with automated bidding. Forget radio programming strategy. Pandora makes a radio channel just for me with just the type of music I want to hear – and it pushes it to my cell phone! And why worry about Nielsen ratings when the video I watch on my cell phone reports back exactly what I watch along with all my demographics.
The centrifugal force of technology change is spinning to the periphery the very skills we used to consider core. I am afraid our students are the best at what doesn’t matter anymore.
We nodded our head when told “the medium is the message,” but we didn’t really get it. Gutenberg started the whole mass communication thing by mastering the technology. But we forgot his lesson. Technology matters. And only those who understand the intricacies of the technology will be able to lead the companies making content in the future.
But a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So we are starting a discussion in the Grady College. How much and what type of technology do we need to teach our students? Tell us what you think.
posted by Grady College /University of Georgia at
4:19 AM
5 Comments:
I don't know if I'm convinced - maybe my teachers just REALLY convinced me that content is king. It seems like there is still so much to be settled, namely the revenue model in the new and more democratic world of information. I still say weather your goal is making money or making a difference, you need a story to tell. I worked in web development for about 8 years, and the technology I was using at the end was vastly different from what I used in school. But I was still trying to create sites that effectively delivered relavent and useful information.
Teach students to be ready for that moment when one person, with a crappy cell phone camera, can change the world. They should know how to get the best content they can in those situations, or how to take someone else's accidental content and make it better.
Given the fragmenting media environment, classes need to create and exploit new niches. We need more flexibility in our curricula and be more entrepreneural. In my own department I'd create a class in advocacy journalism that is technology driven, teaching students how to find and exploit a particular topic, how to draw audience, and HOW TO MAKE A BUCK doing it. We gotta pay the bills.
Every student should be familiar with all the usual gear and understand what makes good and what makes lousy images, video, and writing. Teach 'em to carve out a domain name and a piece of digital turf to call their own, and within each field (journalism, pr, etc.) understand the traditional constraints on content as well as the changing rules. They gotta be flexible.
And it helps if they have a rich uncle.
Interesting story today in NYT
http://tinyurl.com/9zvwew
We need to put Atlas Shrugged back on the Required Reading List.
I think that some form of technical instruction is a must. Back in the old MegaLab days we had to learn HTML and JavaScript, so I think that learning about encoders and XML and the like is just the natural progression. Don't just teach the free tools (Blogger, Vimeo, Twitter) but teach a bit of the underlying foundation as well.
Make kids roll their own blogs and embeddable video and distribution BEFORE you let them play with all the cool tools they have now.
Writing HTML is *still* the best skill I learned in college.
Content is still king!
www.newsweek.com/id/185790
Most views doesn't equate to most $$$
Great discussion.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home