I had the pleasure of speaking to a number of Journalism faculty from historically black colleges and universities at WKU last week. The group was attending a multimedia workshop hosted by the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at WKU and sponsored by Dow Jones Newspaper Fund. I spoke on the impact that digital technology is having on professional journalism and how J-schools can effectively respond to these changes.
Research released in March by Ball State University and Nielsen shows that consumers are spending an average of 8 1/2 hours each day in front of a mix of four video screens. Researchers observed 400 consumers in six DMA’s twice last year. The team recorded the participants’ time in front of the TV screen (1st Screen), the computer screen (2nd Screen), the mobile screen (3rd Screen) and enviornmental screens, such as video screens in a airports/grocery stores/movie screens and GPS navigation screens (4th screen). In fact, the findings indicate that the TV screen, computer screen and audio account for 90% of consumer media exposure each day. Here’s a summary. Download the complete presentation here.
-Consumers spend the most time with live TV, but use of computer, cell, & other screens is growing.
-Cheap digital tools and Web distribution now means that anyone can be a publisher. Individuals will continue to create content. But, businesses will become the biggest publishers with branded multimedia content. News organizations will continue their migration to the Web searching for new pay models. The problem right now is that the “news on paper” model is not working. Online revenue is not nearly enough to sustain most print news organizations.
-Content is ranked based on relevance and accreditation. ex. Google/Digg/Slashdot. This means that great content is recognized and then shared through various communities or personal networks. Recommendations from people we trust act as content filters for us and can help build the cred of the sender. Influence is a type of digital currency and this stamp of approval can happen very quickly as we have seen with viral videos that eventually hit mainstream media. Having “brand fans” will become important in circulating content through the Web. Understanding search technologies will also be a skill worth knowing as more and more consumers utilize Google and other search engines. Steve Rubel and his colleagues at Edelman recently posted a dynamite paper on search.
-Journalism Schools should stay focused on producing quality content using digital tools. Knowing technology is very important today, but the real value is in the content created by that technology. Great content will always have value. Extracting that value from the Web will be one of the greatest challenges for the news business and J schools over the next 5 years.
