Norgdom

A few days ago, Paul Montgomery over at Tinfinger tagged me to take part in a blog meme he started, inspired by a rage contest that is currently running.

Rage is giving one viewer the chance to be programmer for a night and as part of the contest you have to put in your top 20 videos. So M0nty, as he was known to many, put his list together and tagged a few of us to do the same.

It was good fun wracking my brain about what would make up my Top 20 list. I went for a mix of old and new - though I think there is a slightly predominant presence of 80s pop. But, hey it’s my list!
Overall, I was pretty pleased with my line-up. I went for great videos over music, the only exception being Somewhere Only We Know by Keane, which is not such an inspiring video with weird alien teddy things coming out a marsh towards the end. But the song has sentimental meaning to me, as I remember hearing it often on the radio when things were amping up for me at PerthNorg.

I put my videos in a Scouta group - so go and add your comments to my choices. And if you feel inspired get on over to the rage site and make up your playlist. Entries close May 4, so you better hurry.

And with that I tag Rich at Scouta, as well as Justin M - PerthNorg’s music writer.

Hope to read you on the Norg …

A report from Accenture into the future of media was released a couple of days ago and is a real eye-opener into how traditional media is scrambling to hold on to its audiences.

Though they might say it in public, media companies are in fact worried about the growth of UGC that remains largely out of its control:

Media and entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats to their business, according to results of a survey released today by Accenture (NYSE: ACN).

In its annual survey of senior executives in the media and entertainment industry, Accenture examined the growth strategies of companies across the landscape of advertising, film, music, publishing, radio, the Internet, videogames and television.

More than half (57 percent) of the respondents identified the rapid growth of user-generated content — which includes amateur digital videos, podcasts, mobile phone photography, wikis and social-media blogs — as one of the top three challenges they face today. In addition, more than two-thirds (70 percent) of respondents said they believe that social media, one of the largest segments of user-generated content, will continue to grow, compared with only 3 percent of respondents who said they view social media as a fad.

Getting some local news coverage of PerthNorg has proved challenging, but today The West went some way in rectifying that by featuring a story on PerthNorg and our Webby Honoree in it’s IT section. Overall, I am pretty happy with the article and it puts a good emphasis on the fact that we are currently looking for funding. Catie Low did a decent job given that most of the terms (”web 2.0″ “social media”) we spoke about were very new to her. It’s easy to forget that some concepts I take for granted are foreign to a large percentage of the population.

But that comes with the territory and quite personally I love the challenge of communicating the possibilities of PerthNorg and new media to people.

I thought there was a real change of direction at  The West when it put a link up to the article for a few short hours, but then it redirected the link to a Google story - but not sure why. If you want to read the article I scanned it into Flickr and if you squint hard enough you can make the words out. With regard to our capital raising I am happy to pass on our company Information Memorandum to potential investors. Please contact me personally at bronwenc at perthnorg dot com dot au.
Other than that I put in the final approval for a great feature which we will be taking live very soon.

Hope to read you round the norg.

This year over 8000 sites were entered in the Webby Awards so we are honoured to have been made a 2007 Webby Honoree for news. News is a very competitive (read: cut-throat) industry, traditionally dominated by the big media players, so it’s great that smaller independent players like us are beginning to be recognised for the value we bring to news. Go team Cit Js!
The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to work that scores in the top 15% of all work entered into the Webby Awards.

We were recognised along with the big media players such as CNN, AOL, Bloomberg, France24, Yahoo!, as well as the not so serious (but equally brilliant) The Onion, and one of my own personal favourites Wired News. Also given a nod for its work in citizen journalism was Merrinews.

Hope to read you around the norg …

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on my previous post. I have also had the chance to meet some of you since then and chat about PerthNorg some more.

The message I have been getting is that people want to take part in the norg - our growing number of Cit Js would indicate this too. The hesitation seems to be that the thought of “writing news” can be intimidating.
But what is news exactly? My crowd sourcing via Twitter had these thoughts:

Never the truth - Gary Barber

Is the timely info that keeps you connected to a broader environment/ecosystem - Andrew Pascoe

A contrived form of entertainment (on commercial channels and print rags) - Matt Morgan

Spin - Gary Barber

Just paperthin adverts, put together by hacks - Gary Barber

No longer the plaything of politicians and moguls - Andrew Harvey

Often not news anymore - Gary Barber

“…channel 9″ …gag. splutter. coug. dies. - Jordan Brock

Not always news - Matt Morgan

Subjective - Matt Morgan

To be taken with a grain of salt - Myles Eftos

And my favourite

Ephemera - Matt Morgan

The general pattern is pretty negative. News is a dirty word. But we still see “news” as the stuff fed to us on a daily basis by the mainstream media.

So my question is, what exactly do we find intimidating? If the powers that be are doing such a bad job, surely we can do better? It is time we reclaimed the news. Or at least contributed to it to make it better. Let’s give news its value back.

The irony is, that it is that the very ideals on which news has been based that have been its downfall - that is its misguided aim to be objective. Traditionally, people have not had access to the public and have had to rely on the professional objectivity of a reporter to relay their message to the masses.

It was poor compromise for a flawed news gathering process and it was always doomed to fail.

News reporters are no more objective than the rest of us. Or as fellow twitterer Jordan Brock put it “any single person’s objectivity can only be viewed through your own subjectivity”.

Objectivity has always been a false news premise born out of necessity.
But times have changed for the better. Our ideal now should be to open up the channels of media to as many people as possible. We can learn lots from each other directly.

There will always be a place for traditional news corporations, but their power is being eroded for the better.

Let’s embrace our subjectivity and be prepared to share our views and thoughts on events. Let’s make news better.

Let’s rewrite the rules together.

What is news? Well that’s up for grabs