Norgdom

I wrote before that I was giving a talk to Curtin students about PerthNorg and new media. Well the event was last Tuesday night at the Victoria Park Hotel.

Victoria Laurie of The Australian couldn’t be there, but David Hummerston, who is Saturday editor and editorial counsellor at The West, came along to represent print media.

We had a lively discussion at times about the future of journalism, but we were there to inform the propsective journalists about their future career options.

I had a great time and I was impressed with the level of determination among the students to break into the media industry.

I was not surprised that the same lecturers were still telling the students that chances were most of them would not get a job in media. Wake up Prof, you don’t need a job at The West, ABC or any of the commercial channels to get a foot in the door anymore.
New media is where people are getting noticed.

Well, since a lot of the conversation was off-the-record here is a written copy of my speech:

I like to describe the norg as a news site with a twist. The twist is that there are no editors and infact there are no journalists.
All the news on the site – from the links, to original articles, photos, videos and podcasts are submitted by our members who register as citizen journalists – which we call Cit Js.
The norg is just one example of a growing movement in the media that is about user-generated content or citizen journalism.
It is not something that is going to go away and it will very much effect the industry, which you are all just entering.
It was just last week, after Australia announced its ‘old media’ new media laws, that David Kirk CEO of Fairfax came out and said that the future of newspapers is online.
But it is not just newspapers that are affected by the growth of new media. The internet allows for news to be seen through video, heard through podcasts at a time of the audiemces choosing– so it has an impact across the media landscape.
The evolution has in part been brought about through the growth of blogs and podcasts, which have enabled news to become a conversation. This is opposed to the traditional media model where news is a lecture.
The internet, through publishing platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress, has given many people with very limited technical ability the chance to publish their thoughts and views to an audience.
How big that audience is becomes less relevant because the market becomes fragmented as smaller audiences move away from mainstream media to niche media that appeals to them.
It also becomes we media – the media created by the people formerly known as the audience.
So where does the norg fit into this and I was I driven to found it?
There was a defining moment for me when I realised the future of media as we have always known it was about to change.
It was during the Iraq War that I started to hear about the rise of the Baghdad bloggers who were reporting about what was really happening in Iraq.
I came across a few after some searching, and in particular was influenced by Baghdad Burning and Baghdad Blogger.
While most of the mainstream media were reporting from their hotel rooms, these bloggers became the definitive voice for many about what was happening on the streets of Iraq. It was one of the first high profile examples where people were telling the world directly about what was happening around them and just as importantly people were listening.
The norg is my attempt to bring this conversation into the mainstream. Or bring the blogosphere to the broadasphere.
The way people interact with the news is changing. People want real authentic voices with which they can share and exchange ideas.
The facts are checked by the crowd, based on the theory that there is “wisdom in crowds”.
We had a case a few weeks ago where the local PR rep for McDonald’s submitted a story on McDonald’s “Make up your own mind” campaign.
And in fairness to him, he was honest in coming forward and admitting who he worked for, but there was a lively debate between the corporate McDonald’s and other Cit Js. Where else could this conversation take place?
PerthNorg is also about building a community. The more people who join our community and create and upload content the better we become.
So where does this leave all of you as future journalists?
Mainstream media will always have a role to play in society.
But the landscape is changing and it is important that all of you learn how to engage in this new space that is new media. Not only as journalists, but as authentic voices.
In a traditional newsroom, the internet will continue to have a big impact.
As a journalist you may not only be required to file story for the 6 o’clock news in the future, but you may also need to report it for the online news site. There will also be more of a demand to report on site what is happening, as online news needs to be fed 24 hours a day.
Print journalists will also have to master the art of video reporting and live scene reporting, previously more of a demand on radio and TV journalists.
In the mean time, there is nothing stopping you from getting online and taking part in this evolution. I think it is a great opportunity for you to get noticed, because mainstream media is watching.
I hope to see you all around the norg.
Also, thanks to everyone who sent me some ideas for my talk. There was a lot of ground to cover so I hope it wasn’t too all over the place!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 11:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.