Samoan Circle Session:
What is the nextnewsroom?
Jim Saffer:
Old Newsroom New Newsroom
Repository of knowledge Relationship
One to many Many to many
Expert Coordinator/Facilitator/Guide
Knowledge around deadlines Continuous posting
Publisher creator Public creator
Heavily ad supported Lightly ad supported
High cost distribution Low cost distribution
Cost related to non-journalism Cost related to journalism
Professional, dispassionate, unemotional Volunteers, passion, emotional
Profit driven Mission driven, Story telling
Create enough copy to pour around the ads Serving the community
Individual gather, edit, publish Many gather, edit, publish
Chris:
Is their journalism, does it matter?
Is journalism dead?
Clyde,
No need for anewsroom
Dispersed
People rather thanplace
Sources are changing
Unlimited sourcesand growing
Journalist needed tohelp sort through all this
Journalists is adirty job, you have to pay people to sit at a planning board meeting forfour hours
Linda:
Immigrant and ethnicnewspapers don’t know the concept of responsible journalism. Theyhave to learn and practice these.
Rate of assimilationis greater now due to access to media.
Journalism as aprofession is under attack.
Community asNewsroom
Bill:
The largestadvertisers represented 3% of my revenue. If anyone of them didn’tlike what we were doing, I could tell them to jump.
If I’m anon-profit, 80% of my donations have to come from 20% of my donors. These20% are going to determine what I do.
Media organizationsare in the attention business not the advertising business
Rich
Not: Old Newsroomversus New Newsroom
Need to evolve to anew species, not adapt an existing species
It is: Old mediabusiness versus New media business
From News Room toAffinity Group Organizer whose common interest their neighborhood,village, town
From Newspaper businessto Community Network business
Not focus on whogenerates content but the definition of content
News (fettered andunfettered)
Information(fettered and unfettered)
Views (fettered andunfettered)
Inventories(fettered and unfettered)
Accept that contentcomes from professionals, citizens, businesses, organizations.
Chris:
How about the NewsCommunity rather than Affinity Group Organizer