Dan Gillmor on New Media
Posted on September 29, 2006
Filed Under People's Web 2.0 |
Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media made the point that the business model used by newspapers may implode before we’ve nurtured a replacement. I asked him to expand on that.
His analysis, a bit like I’ve said here a few times, is newspapers began laying off journalists because the papers were not improving profits in the way the average business might do. The lack of continuing profit increases was the perceived problem. In terms of quality that’s where the rot set in. At that stage it had litte to do with advertisers fleeing the classified’s page.
Now they do face that problem newspapers continue to respond inadequately. Dan Gillmor says it may not lead to the demise of newspapers but that is a possibility.
He’s heavily involved in trying to create a credible replacement. There are two elements to that - quality and diversity. America’s major newspapers write for the upper third of the urban demographic says Dan - there are experiences and audiences they simply don’t serve and therefore voices we don’t hear.
Diversifying voices is part of the new quality agenda.
One surprising statement from Dan is that the audience is not yet demanding enough. Until people learn to demand better and more diverse voices the impetus to provide them is weak.
It’s a problem that’s been fifty years in the making, he says.
Grounds for optimism? People continue to adopt the tools of creativity so that means there are people seeking a voice, optimistic that people are beginning to take seriously the fact that citizen media needs principles related to the service provided, and more big media businesses are encouraging a wider range of participants.
Comments
Leave a Reply