Seeing as the media (especially the news media) doesn’t really do what I’d like it to do yet, I’ve been thinking about what kind of media world we’re going to inhabit once the next round of this revolution is over.
Here’s what I think is going to happen…
1. All Media companies will be online media companies.
As the Internet becomes the de-facto medium of delivery, old distinctions between organisations in different media will evaporate. I’m not saying that Channel 4 will no longer do broadcast television, or even that The New York Times will no longer do paper newspapers, but that online there will be little to differentiate them; they will all be competing for ‘audience’ (however that’s defined), and they will be trying similar things to attract and engage people.
2. If the action is happening online, people will go where the action is.
The key dynamic in online media is debate, often played out in public fora, comment streams etc, and a good debate can be news itself, especially ones that arise spontaneously and involve actors who are close to the argument. Status and microblogging services can get the word out that something important is going on somewhere quickly enough for the debate often to still be in progress when people arrive. Furthermore these events can happen pretty much anywhere, can coalesce around anything that expresses an opinion - not at a site designated for the purpose. Of course media companies try to create and host such events and many of them will undoubtedly be huge successes, but I suspect that people will go where the action is if they can.
3. If the action is happening offline, people will go where the best view of the online reflection is.
Every major offline event creates online media that reflect it from many angles - some of that media of course created by media companies and some by all sorts of other entities down to the level of the individual. People will tend to go wherever they get the best view of what’s going on (or what’s just happened). That may be an automated aggregation site like addictomatic or popurls or ensembli, etc. or it will be a curated aggregation either provided by a media company or by individuals - but traditional media companies may well be loathe to include media produced by their competitors in their aggregation - it will be the sites with the best curation, best usability, quickest updates, smarted contextualising and widest inclusion that will likely win the eyeballs. And the ones with the largest market presence of course - I wonder who will win the war for ubiquity…?
4. This will happen at micro as well as at macro level.
This kind of behaviour and service opportunity is not limited to major events - hyperlocal aggregators (with hyperlocal advertising models) will also play a big role, especially if the prime local aggregator can be identified quickly during a major event and included in a curated view.
5. Media companies large and small should concentrate on providing the best view.
Curation should be like the AWACS of the media war, providing overview, context and commentary without the inefficiencies of needing to fill dead airtime and blank column inches. It should be able to act when there is something to act on, move quickly to keep up with unfolding events, fill in context when new information is sparse and provide a ’state of play’ during events that last a significant amount of time. Media companies might even learn something from project management about how to keep people informed of what’s been going on…
6. The news doesn’t need to be delivered in parcels.
We don’t need a daily paper, or a half-hour news bulletin - we just need continual information, organised, contextualised and versioned with decent release notes and a measure of significance, so we can see what’s happened recently.
7. The ultimately best view is usually only to be found a while after the event.
Online news should be designed with history in mind - what happens once the event is over? What retrospective view of the events does the coverage provide? What relevance might it have if a similar events happens some time in the future? What if the story isn’t told yet and there are more chapters left to unfold much later than the original events; especially true of crime events and court cases. I think it would be extremely useful it be able to relive all or part of an event (or the aggregated online reflection of an event at least) in real time so you can see what was known and when as the drama unfolded (the replay feature in Google Wave comes to mind). And how should the final record be laid out? How rich can it be? How informative? How educational? How useful?
And people say the news industry is in dire straights - when there’s so much to be done!!
