(Photo by Aaron Roberts)
This panel was blogged live during the event.
How should new media and traditional news sources approach bloggers, aggregating services and social networking services changing the field of journalism? This year's ONA Superpanel -- Journalism Next: Impact of Aggregators, Blogging and Social Networking on the Industry -- takes on this important question that's permeated the ONA Conference.
The panelists have diverse experiences likely to produce varied responses that reflect their respective places in the industry.
Maria C. Thomas is vice president and general manager for NPR Digital Media, and works to develop NPR content on new media platforms.
Josh Cohen works at Google doing product strategy, marketing and publisher outreach for Google News globally.
Ian Clarke is the founder of Thoof, Inc and now works as the architect and coordinator of The Freenet Project.
Meredith Artley is the executive editor of Latimes.com and is working to make the site an interactive resource for the community.
Anil Dash works at the world's leading independent blogging company, Six Apart, Ltd and is himself a veteran blogger who created one of the earliest and most popular blogs online.
We will be live blogging this session from the panel.
Thomas:
Is there something for us to learn from the Radiohead experiment -- they made their album In Rainbows available only online initially, asking users to give what money they felt it was worth?
Dash pointed out the most fundamental thing learned from this project was that when you do something genuine, the users will respond in kind. Anyone you have a relationship with will consider paying. Novelty might be a factor for some.
Clarke expanded on the passivity for creating a cultural pressure to get users to pay for this content. The pace of change is accelerating.
Artley expressed doubts news sites would make money using this strategy on a regular basis.
Experimentation is a good thing, said Cohen. Failure is necessary to find out what works.
Is verifying the source of a comment an act of journalism? Should news sites use commenting?
Google News is in the process of developing a Comments system where participants identified in the story can comment on the story posted. It's not purely open commenting; the population commenting is more narrow. In terms of the volume and content the experiment has been successful so far.
Thoof allows users to do the verification themselves; if users believe something is described in a biased way other users will vote on whether or not it's beneficial. Thoof believe it is more democratic, and also lacks the resources for a different structure.
Dash said news sites have to stop anonymous comments on your site. "If you're talking about race and politics, allowing people to voice their opinion who aren't accountable is harmful, he said. Dash points out people can be jerks when they hide behind an anonymous facade. "You wouldn't put an anonymous source in story if you couldn't identify the value in that source."
From a mainstream media perspective, Artley said a lot of sites opened up anonymous comments because they were accused of having too many walls, and is surprised at being told to stop. Meredith says it depends on the context, and they want a high volume to see what direction the story is going in. She points to the anonymous comments posted in the Virginia Tech coverage as a success.
Registration needs to be easier
Dash said making registration on news sites is something we've caused. So much of what Dash sees online is not based on experience. He sees very little conversation about expanding news online.
Clarke said most Web sites have an agonizing process to register, and Thoof doesn't require signing up at all. If you choose to sign up you type in your email address and are registered. Clarke feels most would benefit by making the registration as streamlined as possible.
Anil said raising the bar in registration will help the site.
The mystery Google algorithm
Amidst a great deal of interest, Cohen tried to explain the Google algorithm and how it ranks story clusters to indicate the most important stories of the day.
He says these signals ranks importance and show where the editorial interest is on the Web site. There’s also the ranking within those clusters. Trusted sources don’t come from Google but rather from what users are selecting. If a user bypasses the first source in a given section that tells you something about the source in that story. He says Google really tries to do it on a story by story basis.
Cohen argues the human part of an algorithm is the inclusion guidelines, beyond just using the wire services.
"We want original content available to our users. We send the traffic out as we always have."
Dash brought up content introduced with no value. Cohen said their users wanted original content and perspectives, not just reprinted agency content.
Meredith said other content providers, including her were concerned Google was taking away their traffic. To counteract this "we need to focus on our unique reporting," she says.
Cohen said that if you’re using content as source material, an editor can have an impact on the source of a story.
Dash said if a wire is taking a story is reprinting it they don’t deserve the traffic, that’s lame. If a newspaper doesn't add value why should the original content contributor be awarded?
Questions from the audience: Is user-generated content journalism?
Tom Reagan, self-identified blogger, referred to an incident where the school board allowed contraceptives in Portland. A local site, Maintoday.com, put on their homepage comments from users in the community. The user comments became the main focus as the updates constantly generated content about what the board decision meant to
them. "User comments were made the main focus. What do you think of that model?" he asked.
Artley said it was great traditional media was realizing that what their readers have to say is important. With Viginia Tech they were getting anonymous comments as a part of the story.
Artley said it is a part of fostering a good conversation. Dash said it is also good business. The story is in the opinion -- the pubic service is being the forum for the debate and this model allows that forum to exist.
Audience question: Some people don't want to invest time in registering on sites so what is the possibility of creating a portable social identity?
Dash pointed to the program OpenId. Audience said it was hacked and Dash disputed this.
Dash said the point is people can use an identity the way they give an email address assuming you are OK with giving that information away.
The positive part is many of these identities have been created. It hasn’t been used on many news sites. Regardless of what you’re using, it could work with what you have. You must be OK with not being able to control the profile and that people will use these profiles to identify themselves.
The question becomes "How will this work to identify people in news stories?" There are different ways to assert identity
that have different value in different contexts, Dash said.
Clarke said this question is related to user interest and they don’t want to give users a Spanish Inquisition when they sign on. It would be in users interest if Web sites were able to cooperate, but many Web sites perceive this information as proprietary and valuable. Thoof allows destination sites to share through their company who is interested in what.
Artley said that sounded like another registration.
Cohen said you should know what you’re trying to do and how will you know if you succeeded? Google said they must have metrics for success to track what they’re doing.
Dash said you must be able to qualify failure so you don’t fail to experiment in the future. Failing is a part of startup culture.
Final wrap up: How will these businesses be seen in three years time?
Four years ago at the ONA, the prediction for the "future" of online news was "more visuals with more video, newsletters will be a blog, print will no longer drive AP, we will not have the newspaper as the central core of NY Times, more intelligent engagement with news users."
This panel's predictions for the future were less concise.
Cohen said there are challenges on the business model and also on the content side. No one has solved that riddle. There are diverse sites starting up to answer how to deliver value to users. Google wants to improve this dilemma.
Artley said things will be more open, everything will be archived and users won't be charged for content.
Clark paraphrased Adam Smith, who said as economies develop there is more specialization. "We will see a trend towards specialization. Old media used to create content and distribute. We’re seeing distribution is something old media has a hard time with regarding companies on the Internet. The distribution component will probably fade away and journalists will focus on analyzing and explaining.
Dash was more pessimistic and said half of big media organizations will have a backlash and become unrecognizable. This will be to the benefit of those willing to evolve.