Ch. 2 Thoughts

It's tough to really have much to say on 7 pages that focus primarily on subjects and technologies which we are all very familiar with by now. In Chapter 2, Briggs focuses on how Web 2.0 has changed the way people consumer news and information and what these changes mean for journalists. It is tough for me to even remember what he calls 'Web 1.0' (a term that was retrofitted to describe the web before interactivity became the rule of the day). So while I am quite positive that everyone in this class is very well versed in Google, YouTube, Flickr, and Digg, I do think that the author makes some interesting points that about the nature of change in the business that are worth discussing. First, this quote from a December '06 issue of Nieman Reports: "Journalists new thinking needs to begin at the periphery, where change comes quickly among the younger generation of users, and a lot more slowly for us. Tomorrow's potential readers are using the Web in ways we can hardly imagine, and if we want to remain significant for them, we need to understand how. Yet news organizations have been all too slow to notice movement in places that are away from what has been their center." Wow. I'll say. Since the time I began studying the field of journalism with any serious interest, it has always seemed to me to be one of the most poorly run industries business-wise in existence. Journalism is supposed to be an engine for positive social change, it is supposed to assist in moving us a society forward, yet it has been painfully slow to embrace technology and changes in the information sharing dynamic. I realize that the field is not some massive, monolithic entity. But in general, it has long seemed that the people running these media outlets have the mindset that "this will all blow over. This whole internet thing will just die out and we will be fine staying just the way we are." Change does start at the periphery, and it starts with young people. As much as old, grizzled journalism types like to rail against the younger generations, if they had paid more attention to younger folks information consumption habits, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now. Which brings me to the quote about Google from the chapter: "They're sailing with the wind, instead of sitting becalmed praying for a business model, like the print media, or trying to tack upwind by suing their customers, like Microsoft and the record labels." Old media outlets had been doing what they were doing and raking in fat profits for so long that they turned a blind eye to innovation and the future. Why? Because innovation costs money, and it is risky. Change is hard, but it's not as hard when you're one of the ones driving the change.

I especially enjoy Briggs' characterization of news as a "conversation" in the world of Web 2.0 Users can leave comments on stories, they can post their own stories, etc. To me, this is how news is created anyways; this is how journalists work. After doing an initial story, you hear feedback from readers (previously maybe through the mail or by phone) and that gives you another angle, or another idea for a story. And you go from there. Now, it is just happening before our eyes.