journalism in transition

Kathy E. Gill16 October 2009

1.Trends: Shift Happens2.The Market Abhors A

Vacuum3.It’s Not Just Newspapers4.The Evolution To Real-

Time News

39%

Pew, Jan 2009

9%

Pew, Jan 2009

State of the News Media, 2009

State of the News Media, 2009

• Mid-1980s : 22%• 1998 : 21%• 2005 : 19%

1998: Monica & Bill (Drudge)9.11.20012002: Trent Lott (right & left)2004: Memogate2004: Asian Tsunami2005: London bombings2007: AttorneyGate (TPM, George

Polk award)2009: AmazonFail and Iran Elections

1999: Yahoo! buys GeoCities, host to 3.5 million individual Web sites (most abandoned!)

1999: the Poynter Institute starts the “MediaNews” blog

2002: Google buys Blogger; estimate of 500,000 blogs worldwide in total

February 2002: Salon and Fox News add blogs 2003: Iraq war gives rise to war blogger 2009: 6 million blogs on Wordpress.com; >1B

monthly pageviews; Yahoo! shutters GeoCities

The Charlotte Observer used a blog format to report on Hurricane Bonnie in August 1998; “Dispatches from the Coast” is the first known use of blog to cover a breaking news story.

The mass audience is deadPublishing is free (push-button)The cost of dealing with atoms

goes up as readership goes down

Today’s professional listens as well as talks

This is not a cyclical change

Clay ShirkyHoward Rheingold Jay RosenTheReadWriteWebA Fair(y) Use Tale (copyright)RSS (et al) In Plain English

Photos are iStockPhoto or fair use: Crowd, http://www.flickr.com/photos/twose/887903401/ Megaphone,

http://warkscol.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/superchick_megaphone_logo_hi.jpg

Kent State, photo John Paul Filo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Tank Man, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/

Death of Neda Agha-Solton, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan

This presentation is published on WiredPen.com and Slideshare.net

Kathy E. Gill– http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill or @kegill– http://wiredpen.com/ and http://slideshare.net/kegill