The future of news may very well be like its past - you-centric. As people and businesses are able to publish their content directly on digital and mobile media, the third party filter is shifting from media organizations to people through social consumption. Links and comments contribute to spreading and enriching the information.
Your sphere of influence over the creation of content that could become the topic of news stories goes up with your social capital. The better the content, the more useful to the community, the more socialized and in some cases viral the conversation becomes, the greater the news potential, which in turn contributes to increase your brand equity - and influence.
The sphere of control you have over your digital assets (on the left) is impacted by the degrees of interaction you and your content are likely to have in social networks and as the content is exposed to social consumption (on the right).
Personal publishing tools, syndication and search are respectively the key enablers and the nodes in this mechanism.
Social Spaces
The symbols in the middle represent various digital publishing tools, some of which give you also the opportunity to have a conversation with your audience - directly in the tools. Not all media is social and some of it is not social all the time.
For example, LinkedIn can be social with the questions and answers and the ability to request connections and give recommendations. However, it is not a live stream where people upload images, make comments, and bookmark posts on a continuous basis like FriendFeed. Twitter can be very one-way - there are days when it truly feels like one of those European round abouts and you cannot wedge your way into a conversation as nobody is looking at your @reply.
SlideShare, YouTube, and Flickr are more visual and at the same time broader - anyone can find your presentation, video, or photographs and leave a comment if they are members (I might need to verify if this is true for SlideShare). Wikis can be the most collaborative of all - a space that is everyone's who's signed up for the specific purpose to contribute.
Your News Stories
Traditional news is the model that worked in the past. The press would filter the information to us with the few other options being hyper local - community-driven opportunities like school board, for example. In this case, developing an exclusive relationship with the press would allow you to feed them content in the hope they would find it useful and publish it.
Today, you can start by publishing the content and exposing it directly to partners, customers, and the press alike. As your community of employees, peers, and customers interacts with it, they may share and build upon it - this part may be very uncomfortable for those who have not yet given up on controlling the message.
However, the interaction does not need to occur without you. You can be at the center of it by facilitating, listening, and participating to the conversation. In fact, the more active you are in the social spaces, the more likely it is that your content will be shared among people with a Creative Commons mindset - they will give you credit.
Which in turn will stimulate more pull for your content (RSS), higher search ranking (Google), and potentially buzz that could attract the attention of the press and get you published in places that have a wider distribution (but not necessarily a higher engagement).
It almost sounds like it's the public that ends up doing the pitching, until you remember that it was your involvement in the first place that started the cycle.
What do you think?
A very timely post for me - thank you Valeria. I will be launching a book this August through Jossey-Bass and realize that the best way to promote it will be on-line, through social media. I have been working like crazy to establish myself on all of the media you mentioned: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, a blog... it can be a lot of work -- and it will be an exciting experiment to see how it all turns out. Keep the great information coming -- I truly find value in your postings - you do a superb job!
Posted by: John Spence | May 24, 2009 at 10:58 AM
Amazing article Valeria, amazing because it explains very well the complex social interactions that happen everyday on the web.
Posted by: Diego | May 25, 2009 at 12:34 AM
I think this model would work for things where there was only casual attention needed. one of the plusses of professional journalism is that people are paid to keep track of tiresome, but important things for the rest of us, like city council meetings, zoning debates, all the parts of civil society that need active maintenance by some of us for the rest of us. i don't see a place for those information workers, who learn a beat, in this model.
journalism is a way to demonstrate your expertise and handling of an issue and ability to know how to slot it into the editorial fabric of a given group's readership/audience. that has a real value. it can focus attention and make everybody smarter about important things. it can call attention to important things.
that is not about tools, it is what the tools are good for.
Posted by: Kevin Jones | May 25, 2009 at 02:15 PM
It is only a matter of time before most of our traditional off-line activities move into a web based mimic.
We have seen many social activities thrive in the online world. We are seeing traditional media change. And we will see much more.
Some will work very well and others will be only a substitute for the real thing.
The things that transition well into an online world will live and the others will ebb back into traditional spaces.
What is so good about this is that we can share in the discussion with hundreds of thousands of people to make these products better. Or we can discuss and decide that some things are better left off line.
It is so exciting just to be a part of the discussion...
Posted by: Bruce Christensen | May 26, 2009 at 11:31 AM
@John - thank you for your kind words. Yes, getting established, having a presence is a first step. However, you will need to participate in what others are doing as well, which of course you know.
@Diego - glad you enjoyed. I'll be curious to learn how many people are asking you for your music now :)
@Kevin - you write about topics I have shared abundantly in the past here (if you look at the new media category, you will find deep dives on may of your points and more). The issues are many but one emerges from your argument: who pays for that work? Are citizens going to be willing to pay? We know that an advertising model will not subsidize "calling attention to the important, but boring, things" as that is the part that is going away more and more... I welcome your thoughts.
@Bruce - good insight! There is going to be and ebb and flow of off line and online and I agree, we live in exciting times.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | May 26, 2009 at 04:15 PM