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The two weeks in the Annenberg basement (aka. room G34) have been fun but a tiring session. Poor professors tried to give an overview of the history and future of journalism while discussing about the current state of the media. Not a task for the weak-hearted.

Personally I was extremely happy to see the strong entrepreneurial view that the teachers had. There is not going to be steady jobs in legacy media. Ask you nearest colleague in class about their latest experience in the business and most will say that it wasn't a great one.

While Annenberg seems to be up to speed what's happening in the field, some others aren't. I just read an article from American Journalism Review that basically said that newspaper publishers should boycott internet and especially Google. I had to double check the date in the articel. Yes, it was published this summer, not few years ago. For a second I thought this is a fake AJR page that was written to show how clueless the legacy media is. But no, it was the AJR site.

Read the article. What a wonderful chance for us dreaming about our own business! After the newspapers decide to boycott the internet, I'm going to have a online news startup that reports what the newspaper are printing but not publishing to the web (applying fair use, of course). Big media companies are the ones that "plummet the price of online ads to Depression-like levels". After they are gone from the web, market will heal itself and my startup will prosper!

I'm here at Annenberg because I wanted to take a year off and think. I've worked the past 12 years in a great newspaper and had loads of fun and great experience. But I don't honestly believe that the next 12 years in the business will be as pleasant. Money is tight, everyone's scared about the future and the accounting department is trying to gain control in the newsroom.

So I guess it's better to take year off and decide if I want to continue in media business. The first week at Annenberg has been a blast for me: a continuous stream of new ideas and paths that journalism could take in the future.

Take the Monday night dinner. Jerry Swerling takes the stage and starts talking about the indifferences between journalism and PR, introducing scotusblog.com. And I'm sitting there going PERFECT! This is what I've been looking for: the perfect meltdown of new kind of corporate money and quality journalism!

I'm pretty sure I was probably one of the few in the room that got excited about this. Most Journalism Graduates were probably worried. Melting PR and journalism, that's dangerous!

But folks, get real. Journalism today is made with corporate money. The corporates providing money for the newsroom are making money on selling ads and subscriptions. Why selling ads and subscriptions is considered more trustworthy business than selling  antitrust practise? Or selling serials (as I noted in my previous post)?

It's because we are used to this business model. We think that this is the only way to make money and good, reliable journalism at the same time. But we have been told several times during this week that ithe readers are in charge. They decide what they consider reliable. They don't care about who's money it is that enables the newsmaking process. Fox news has proper "media corporate money", but do you honestly believe they are providing quality journalism?

Big questions. I'm happy I have a full year to think about them.

While the future of journalism sat in the basement class G34, journalism was officially announced to be dead. This was done by by Wired editor Chris Anderson who was interviewed in the Spiegel magazine. Let's see what he said:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism. I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those wos mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like 'horseless carriage'.

Strong words. Then again, Mr. Anderson is paid up to $50.000 to say these things in the front of all the biggest media executives and editor-in-chiefs in the world.

If you continue reading the interview, you will notice that Anderson has lot of the same points as Dean Gillman had at our dinner. Traditional media is not providing news for the elite people, such as Anderson and Gillman. Judging from the declining circulation numbers, newspapers aren't doing it for the ordinary folk either.

I personally believe there is going to be massive changes in the way we are informed about the world (see, I didn't use any of the forbidden words). The industry is, as Professor Suro described, in cacophonic state and needs a completely new paradigm.

The change will probably come outside our industry, outside the big media companies. It might be Google, it might me General Electric. My favorite bet is either Wal-Mart or Nestle: they will buy out media companies because they want to print content on the serial boxes. So you still get your NY Times delivered to the breakfast table.

I would like to continue Professor Suro's metaphor. He stated that the problems that media is facing right now are as difficult as "trying to change oil to a car while doing 70 on the highway". If you think about the paradigm shift we need, it's more like getting rid of the need to commute and survive without cars. Replace the word "cars" with "journalists" and commute with "journalism" so you'll get the picture.

Anyone living in LA knows that this sounds insane. But that's what we are basically doing here. Good luck everyone.

PS. My 5 cents for the new bloggers: if you want your blog to be found, it's always a good idea to mention (geek) celebs and companies. Let's see how it works from USC site :)

How to add a link to your video In Movable type:

1. Choose Create
2. from that menu Upload File
3. then comes the same menus as with images
   

In the end you can add your video to a blog post from Insert Video button (next to the insert Image). It shows up as a text link, like one below.

USC JOUR 580v2.mov

The same embedded from YouTube


USC JOUR 580 Interview.mov

And interview embedde from YouTube

People who have been working with Steve Jobs claim that he creates Reality DIstortion Field around him. It's a mixture of charm and exaggeration that makes you believe anything.

But you don't need a person to distort an audience's sense of proportion or scale. I believe that technology and being around tech-savy people has the same effect on people. You slowly become to think that every person knows how to blog, what a troll is and thinks that Jay Rosen has absolutely no life beyond Twitter.

Having RDF on is cool if you work for Wired or CNet: your audience is on the same level. But if you happen to work for Legacy media, you have a problem. When you start up a discussion board and announce it in the newspaper, half of your readers don't know what a discussion board is. The ten percent that try out the board are puzzled because there is just too many threads, inside jokes and evil comments. And every time they try to participate, there is somebody yelling USE THE SEARCH or SEE THIS THREAD YOU STUPID $%$#@!

This applies to even the most wired countries. Even if 90% percent of households have broadband, it doesn't mean people living in those households are geeks. They are ordinary people doing online banking, reading news, checking prices and the saviest bunch might even try online shopping.

Most of the cool web 2.1 stuff is used by geeks (like me) and geeks get bored easily. That's why internet has it's own hype cycle. It helps you out when you feel like you need reality check. According to Gartner, Twitter is oh so 2009 next year so you shouldn't worry too much about tweeting.