The news industry, like music, must simply learn and adapt to what’s going on around it, instead of resisting change to the point where it’s too late to turn back. Instead of sticking its head in the ground and pretending that downloading music is merely a trend, the recording industry should have scaled and reformed its sales and distribution models when it had the chance.

Similarly, journalism must acknowledge and make use of the latest trends and technology to successfully evolve with consumers.

I don’t see any difference between the NY Times’ decision to offer free content and Radiohead offering people to pay as they please for an album. Both of these ‘content providers’ have successfully understood change and used it to their advantage.

If news blogs offers free content, then why shouldn’t online newspapers do likewise? Both profit from online advertising revenue, don’t they?

And the more free content that you have to offer, the more the likelihood of an increase in traffic, no? So, what’s the holdup?

Is the difference between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ content in the content itself, or the means in which it is accessed?

Blogs will not kill journalism. I predict more journalists will hop on the bandwagon. I began my blog to share stories that my old editor didn’t want. I wrote for a Christian newspaper, who–at the time–didn’t want to share church scandal with the community. Although I respected my boss, I didn’t totally agree. The first blog I wrote had a more journalistic tone.

Every month I think I will start a newsblog, but I don’t want the headache of charging my subscribers and spending 80% of my time in sales meetings to pay for all the fact checkers, staffed writers and photographers I would need. I like things small. I have a small child. Plus I’m having so much fun at my blog I don’t care to.

When blogs began to garner big ad bucks like papers then I would be alarmed until then…

On the MSM: think of the field you know and love best – do you go to the MSM for information about it? I sure don’t! I may go to a blog by someone I trust though. Blogs are often written by people with specific expertise, journalists rarely are – and increasingly (no doubt to their frustration) are more and more doing scissors and paste on media releases.

Will this lead to the end of MSM? I don’t think so. There are now blogs mimicking magazines – giving huge numbers of posts in one area on any day. But people go on to blogs to look for specific stuff – the general view on lots of different things is special to newspapers, TV and Radio.

PS A lot of the blogs on the Sydney Fairfax paper are fairly low quality. Mostly a chance to express opinion or have some fun. Very little information provided.

It finally entered the mainstream consciousness when the MSM did such a bad job with the War on Terror / Iraq, but it’s been going on for ever.

A lot of people in the world are still living in an industrial age paradigm and can be very elitist. The same thinking that caused the music industry to miss the boat is the same thinking that will cause media to suffer as well.

We are moving past the knowledge economy into the age of the wisdom economy where the ‘long tail’, ‘guru and crowd wisdom’, ‘crowd sourcing’ and anarchic self- organising systems rule.

Get with the 21st century already!

It finally entered the mainstream consciousness when the MSM did such a bad job with the War on Terror / Iraq, but it’s been going on for ever.

A lot of people in the world are still living in an industrial age paradigm and can be very elitist. The same thinking that caused the music industry to miss the boat is the same thinking that will cause media to suffer as well.

We are moving past the knowledge economy into the age of the wisdom economy where the ‘long tail’, ‘guru and crowd wisdom’, ‘crowd sourcing’ and anarchic self- organising systems rule.

Get with the 21st century already!

Kim adds that “the MSM in the long run, is a business.” That leads to a stack of other issues as well, which individual bloggers — even those operating as a business — don’t face: unions, societal expectations, financial obligations and legal issues.

I know that these have been some of the issues I’ve been facing while slowly cajoling my company into blogging.

The MSM journalists that Darren spoke to at that conference are reacting to those pressures. It’s almost like the Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I believe they’re in the mourning process for Journalism As It Was.

Denial is no longer possible, as the influence of new media and user-generated content grows.
Anger is the next step. Some will hate all new media. Some will hate only one part (i.e., “feedback from people on the scene is great — bloggers discussing it the next day, don’t know anything”). Some will hate only the new media in their own field of expertise.
Bargaining is represented by the half-measures of many organizations or corporations who use blogging, but can’t really “let go.”
Depression is the realization that the industry as they knew it is dying and a new model is being created. Darren saw that in the journalists who were worried about not being able to find freelance work.
Acceptance is part of the Intrigued by New Media step — and I think it ties into the Frustrated step:
When we’re ready to go, we want to go.
Now.

But businesses just don’t move that fast. They can’t. At the very least, they have to have the lawyers look at it — there’s too much at stake to leap before they look.

So I think that any analysis which insists that a corporation or organization should act or react as an individual does feeds the division between MSM and NM, and undermines the opportunity to get MSM interacting smoothly and (mutually) profitably with NM.

For instance, I’m at a press event where Sega announces they are coming out with a new game system. This is huge news. Unfortunately, newspapers (if they even cover it) won’t print the news until tomorrow and magazines, well, you’ll be waiting until next month’s issue. A blog could break that story mere seconds after the announcement is made and have pictures to boot.

Add to that the sense of community you feel with a blogger and his or her fellow readers, the instant gratification of knowing your thoughts are being read immediately after you press “submit” – no waiting for your “Letter to the Editor” to get published days/weeks later – and you have a deadly combination on your hands.

Long story short – blogs are a definite threat to traditional types of journalism.

Let’s hope so.

How many bloggers actually got invited into political debates in a hall full of ministers?

Nevertheless, one advantage that bloggers can sit on will be the added freedom of speech whereby we are not that bounded by laws and regulations (although there are).

This is a tough one as I sit reading with my first cup of coffee for the day.

Anyone who would assume that journalists are the only ‘intelligent people’ capable of delivering information has either a tremendously huge ego, or is a complete technophobe and his fear of technology has made him deliver unintelligent comments.

Also selecting blog content to read is much easier than old media. Buying a paper only to immediately discard half of it and then read less than half of the remainder is a drag. I syndicate the blogs that interest me and have the ability to syndicate individual categories if an entire blog isn’t of interest to me.

Good blog content gets referenced wildly and with ease. Telling someone “you should read yesterday’s edition of ‘The Age’ to see an interesting article” is hardly worth doing, you can’t easily buy old editions of papers so it’s only when they started putting their content online that it became accessible. Now I can email a URL to my friends when I see a good article. If there’s something I feel the need to comment on then I have a link in my own blog post.

Finally there is the issue of ethics. The number of bloggers who claim to be objective and impartial in their writing is quite small. But I don’t believe that bloggers are any less objective or more biased than “professional journalists”, they merely declare their biases.

I don’t claim to be un-biased in my blogging. I advocate causes that I believe in and am happy to tell everyone why I advocate them. I wish that all “professional journalists” would be as honest.

At Fairfax?