Sullivan writes that blogging is jazz to established journalism’s classical music. One doesn’t replace the other, but each requires a different way of performing, a different way of listening and interacting. Each complement and enhance appreciation of the other.

In fact, for all the intense gloom surrounding the news-paper and magazine business, this is actually a golden era for journalism. The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction. It has enabled writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And yet it has exposed a hunger and need for traditional writing that, in the age of television’s dominance, had seemed on the wane.

Sullivan says that the platform defines the style and interaction.

Reading at a monitor, at a desk, or on an iPhone provokes a querulous, impatient, distracted attitude, a demand for instant, usable information, that is simply not conducive to opening a novel or a favorite magazine on the couch. Reading on paper evokes a more relaxed and meditative response. The message dictates the medium. And each medium has its place—as long as one is not mistaken for the other.

This drags us to a bigger question, one that goes beyond the rather petty distraction of bloggers vs journalism:

Why are we publishing our public radio journalism on a computer screen in almost the exact same way as we publish it to an electrical signal transmitted through the air?

Television requires a different kind of journalism than does radio. So what is the appropriate, legitimate and journalistically sound way for public radio and TV to translate its reporting to the web?

By copying and pasting reporter’s scripts to the site? Probably not. This is a big challenge. What are we dreaming up? What experiments are we conducting? Are we being too prissy and unimaginative about the platform?

He includes comments from Jeff Jarvis and Mike Orren, who point out the value of the content, but also the challenge of getting people to, first, read it, and, second, to contribute to it. Oh yeah, and generating revenue from it.

Is it compelling content? Yes, even if it’s not NEWS. I feel the conflict between NEWS and this other stuff all the time. I can express the journalistic mission of my organization in lofty terms along with the best of them, but I also find myself combing sites trying to find a nearby ethnic grocery or the latest freeway ramp closings.

Gathering the information is hard, but Adrian Holovaty’s announcement this week of a Python library that can scrape the data from a stack of web pages is a step forward. Regardless, it will still take a lot of work. Our newsrooms process tons of information every day, but Holovaty and others make the compelling argument that we waste it.

I came face-to-face with this problem on Friday at a meeting with public TV to discuss an Election ’08 site we’re building together. Our news team knows, every day, which candidates are in Iowa, where they’re going, who they’re speaking to, when they’re going to do it. Our audience wants to know, too. Can we push it to the web easily? No, the information is scattered; it’s on Post-Its, in emails from the campaigns, written on calendars. We have a level of organization that allows us to get our job done, just barely. But now our job is expanding. Is one of my future News openings for a database expert? We can’t easily do all of the work ourselves, so it makes sense to find partners who are in the same business and work together.

What about the revenues? Hell if I know. Terry Heaton says:

The question is how do you make money in a disintermediated, distributed media paradigm? Experiments in hyperlocal media don’t fail because of content; they fail, because they can’t deliver the promise of sustainable revenue. [...] This is why I keep harping on organizing the local web and building databases of knowledge at the local level rather than trying to make another content play. [...] How we put advertisers together with users is the key, and “news content” isn’t the only way to do that.

Because of a minor issue (let’s call it Autosave), these notes are adapted from Jessica Duda’s excellent summary on the Beyond Broadcast blog. I summarize them here not to pass them off as my own but to have a record here of the sessions.

Diane Mermigas, The Hollywood Reporter

Both commercial and public media need to do the following:

• change their orientation and embrace interactivity
• understand how technology empowers the consumer
• redefine the concept of content
• deepen advertising and commerce
• reinvent business models
• view the process with an entrepreneurial spirit

Focus on the strength of public media – strong content

Public media needs an organized effort of producing content that is creative, independent, diverse, credible, and in-depth, with links to education and problem-solving. This will ensure public media’s survival and their ability to make money.

Media property rights are in flux. Currently, the web is a deliberate system with most online companies posting content through a filtering system and users consuming only what they specifically seek, which narrows their interests and creates an information vacuum. BBC, MTV are examples of the passive broadcast model of web delivery services; they could be more interactive – and more profitable.

The role of public media is thus to fill the void of the marketplace and monetize these ideas. Public media should learn from these models to create the services and interactivity:

• TiVo
• Ipod
• Open TV
• Visible World

Seek strategic partnerships

There are a variety of partnerships that public media should pursue. Serving as a content provider to other businesses can include providing local content, such as to Google. At the April 2006 National Association of Broadcasters conference, they discussed working with cable operators to obtain local advertisers as these operators have a local connection. Media companies with such partnerships have increased local advertising revenue growth by 30 percent in the past four years – as opposed to the usual three to four percent. Public media should do the same and align with consumer technology companies to expand digital delivery options.

There are also many unknowns, especially as old media financial targets and benchmarks are used to evaluate and set new media goals – without knowing how consumers will ultimately use the quickly-evolving technologies that will also affect new, unanticipated forms of expression, [such as Second Life.] Thus, making assumptions is challenging and focusing on the consumer is key. Overall, for every challenge, there are at least two opportunities.

Dan Nova, Highland Capital Partners

There is a problem of the “needle in a haystack” of online media companies/services. A new online firm is funded every day and they are all excited about the Web 2.0 world. Audience trends show that new outlets of public participatory media can grow exponentially as early as the first year, such as YouTube growing up to 6.5 million users and Technorati reaching 1.5 million users.

Low costs of participatory media and attractive business models

The old adage of “If you build it, they will come” has changed to “if they build it, they will come.” Participatory media presents many attractive low cost and high value content that in turn affect the criteria investors use to fund new participatory online sites.

Participatory media costs

• Low costs to attract participatory media
• Low customer acquisition costs
• Low customer retention costs
• Low marketing costs
• Low content development costs
• Low technology costs (open source)

Characteristics of quality content

• Easy to use
• Effective
• Entertaining
• Participatory

Acquisitions are increasing

Traditional media are being squeezed – being cash rich can be a liability. New media have had financial success, but the business models are moving quickly. Now, old media is competing with new media to buy new-new media.

How to evaluate participatory media websites through three main development stages

New opportunities

• Focus on the team
• Assess how the idea compares to the existing competition
• Review the development time and cost
• Don’t emphasize the business model specifics – it is premature
• Look at a valuation range of 0-5 million upfront

Mid-stage value drivers

The mid-stage of participatory media development is a tenuous time and is dangerous for investors as the valuation is based on the initial ‘buzz’ – not hard numbers of tried and true audiences.

Later stage companies

Assessing later stage companies, look for the same fundamentals as the new opportunities.

• Focus on the team
• Assess the revenue streams and sources
• Review the margins
• Confirm the financial sustainability
• Critically assess the business model – very important
• Assess where the biggest windows exist

Other characteristics of the successful later stage companies include: an “insane” customer focus, simple content presentation, huge market, active/missionary leaders, and constant improvement.

Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation

Business models discussed at this conference have largely been based on charity or advertising. In order to for them to be sustainable, public media must have a public purpose. The trends all show the revolution has arrived, especially as the two biggest commercial TV stations are putting their content on the web for free. Once measured by the household (radio, television), media consumption metrics are per the individual (internet, on demand); thus, changing the benchmarks and terms of media.

Changes in the public media audience – new creators

Public media should go to VOD on the internet as attention is the challenge – distribution is not the problem. Of course monetization is another problem for public media. Media cannot be a one-way company in a two-way world. The old media presented a push approach and treated the audience as mute. Now they can see the explosion of self-expression. The old media cannot ignore the public are creators, users, and speakers. The old media will try to make the public ‘feel’ as though we are interactive which may not be the case. A new way to assess media delivery is that old models are broadcast, cable TV, public TV and the new is “Independent Noncommercial TV” and the “networked individual.”

Much growth still needs to occur within the new media users as the current 40 million bloggers amount to less than one percent of the world population – public media need to reach the other 99 percent. At the same time, the internet, while useful, timely and convenient lacks public trust – to the extent local television ranks higher.

Recommendations for membership-based participatory media

One out of every two Americans are apart of member of a cooperative – namely credit unions which are a trust institutions. Information is also trust issue and we can use this concept of a membership-based, participatory organization to create our own credible content. The public should form and pay dues to media membership organizations to create their own local news so that the people can decide what is newsworthy. They should look for a base in civil society organizations and ask people to pay to join a group that allows them cooperatively provide their own content.

Ironically, civic society groups are pushing back on this idea – they believe the government should fund such public media. However, “you can’t speak to power on power’s nickel.” Professional journalists are also suspicious of citizen journalists and such membership organizations. Professionally-trained journalists should conduct the investigative work but media organizations should also have a space for citizen journalists to report other types of news and information.

Overall, the old media format is to report, edit, and control responses and have such [limiting] mottos as “All the news that is fit to print.” The media presented at this conference seek to break this top-down approach – from Google to Wikipedia. All of these models have different functions and are open and closed to varying degrees. If you give participants the chance to be a member and use more functions, the more they will be willing pay dues to have an impact influence beyond their community. We can have a chance to make that revolution.

Nesson delivered a brief and powerful address about the rhetorical space of the Internet, the central value of openness and the challenge posed by those who would curtail that openness. He spoke about universities and the mandate to create an “open commonwealth of knowledge.”

“Be confident. There is an optimistic future ahead. And the challenge is to be gentle to your enemies.”

Josh spoke about Chicago Public Radio’s plan to launch a second service next year. The service will be targeted to a new, younger demographic that doesn’t regularly listen to public radio now – a more web-savvy, non-traditional radio listener. Josh described the radio station as an outgrowth of the web site, rather than the other way around, and their plans to make user-generated content one of the centerpieces of the service – content modules that might include essays, discussions, and live or recorded music.

Todd Broadie is a part of the upcoming WYMS launch. The station plans to be heavily music-oriented, aimed at a younger demographic that doesn’t regularly listen to public radio now. Todd described their plans to insert user-generated content into the mix, with short-form news features, as well.

And Rhod Sharp of BBC 5 Live talked about the overnight show he hosts on 5 Live, BBC Radio’s News/Talk/Sports format; he and the show’s producers encourage listeners to submit podcasts, and they use portions of those podcasts on the show.

Our group felt that getting the best possible content from our audience will require:

• Encouraging, training, critiquing and commissioning them. This is a level of engagement, perhaps, that many of us haven’t fully factored into our calculations of the monetary and staff costs of such an initiative. But it’s clearly on the minds of Josh, Todd B., and Rhod, who described plans to offering training on storytelling, gathering natural sound, conducting interviews, and finding good equipment.
• Nudging your citizen content producers out of their bedrooms and dens and into the real world. That’s how they get to the issues in their community that are important and how they find other voices that can add to their stories.
• An extensive filtering system to find, fact-check, and rate all this content. Josh and his colleagues at Chicago Public Radio will have to mine existing content libraries like PRX, as well as process the stories filed by citizen producers, and the material generated by the station’s planned outreach into the community (ex. the StoryCorps booth concept). Everyone agreed that this is going to be very important to ensure an expected level of quality, although Rhod brought an interesting counterpoint to the discussion from his BBC perspective: NPR strives for a standard of perfection in audio production that’s unrealistic in this new kind of audience interaction. For instance, some engineers may reject mp3 audio for broadcast, but those standards will have to be reconsidered.

Should we pay them? Everyone rejected the idea of a general payment system, but thought that payment could be a part of commissioning work from citizen journalists. Rhod says the BBC constantly “trolls” for content, looking for people writing good blogs or making great podcasts and commissioning content from them.

Josh expressed a concern that others seemed to share: the “MySpace generation” doesn’t see public radio as a creative outlet; they can take their work elsewhere.

“The War Tapes” just won Best Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on a recent local panel discussion about TV news, in which a member of the audience challenged the use of terms like “breaking” and “severe.” Check out these defensive responses:

WPXI news director Corrie Harding said the breaking news bug afflicts TV stations because research shows that’s what people want to see.

WTAE News Director Bob Longo: “The first three letters of news are new.”

A bit weak, to say the least. True, the news directors are executing strategies based on research, which seems to be telling them that viewers prefer live, local, late-breaking reporting, no matter how trivial the live, local event. I won’t challenge the research findings on the question of up-to-the-minute news, although I’d like to see what kinds of questions the research firms are asking. The problem is execution: viewers can tell the difference between the important and the trivial, and the more trivial live and local events a station chooses to cover with live trucks and helicopters – from one-car accidents on the freeway to cats trapped in trees – the greater the long-term damage to the level of attention that viewers are willing to pay to the station.

What we’re learning from Steve Gillmor and others is that attention is more important than just about anything else as media choices explode. There are a lot of local TV stations digging their own graves.

• Citizen journalism is, in a significant way, about owning your own words. That implies responsibilities as well as freedom. We asked people to read and agree to a “pledge” that briefly explained what we believed it meant to be a citizen journalist — including principles such as thoroughness, fairness, accuracy and transparency. Although some cynics hooted that this was at best naive, we’re convinced it was at least useful.
• Limiting participation is not necessarily a bad idea. By asking for a valid e-mail address simply in order to post comments, you reduce the pool of commenters considerably, but you increase the quality of the postings. And by asking for real names and contact information, as we did with the citizen journalists, you reduce the pool by several orders of magnitude. Again, however, there appears to be a correlation between willingness to stand behind one’s own words and the overall quality of what’s said.
• Citizen journalists need and deserve active collaboration and assistance. They want some direction and a framework, including a clear understanding of what the site’s purpose is and what tasks are required. (I didn’t do nearly a good enough job in this area.)
• A framework doesn’t mean a rigid structure, where the citizen journalist is only doing rote work such as filling in boxes.
• The tools available today are interesting and surprisingly robust. But they remain largely aimed at people with serious technical skills — which means too ornate and frequently incomprehensible to almost everyone else. Our tech expert, Jay Campbell, did a heroic job of trying to wrestle the software into submission to our goals. We still felt frustrated by the missing links.
• Tools matter, but they’re no substitute for community building. (This is a special skill that I’m only beginning to understand even now.)
• Though not so much a lesson — we were very clear on this going in — it bears repeating that a business model can’t say, “You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.” There must be clear incentives for participation, and genuine incentives require resources.
• On several occasions, PR people offered to brief me on upcoming products or events that they hoped I’d cover in my capacity as a tech journalist, but were happy to give the slot to our citizen journalists. This testifies to a growing recognition among more clued-in PR folks that citizen journalism is here to stay.
• Although the participants — citizen journalists and commenters — are essential, it’s even more important to remember that publishing is about the audience in the end. Most people who come to the site are not participants. They’re looking for the proverbial “clean, well-lighted place” where they can learn or be entertained, or both.
• If you don’t already have a thick skin, grow one.

Read Gillmor’s full post, if you can… and don’t forget Glaser’s interview over at MediaShift.