PR Atrophy Sign 1: Your PR universe consists of Print, TV, Radio, Web site and Email.
“Make way for a generation of storytellers who get it”: my favorite line from the MediaCenter’s report on the Future of News. The photo of the young man holding a PSP belies the actual message – that We (that means you) are dead-center, in the middle of that future. It is swirling all around us. Look at the way you gather information everyday.
Somehow, we don’t translate the way we live our lives – running to the Internet for news, recreation, or connection; mobile devices, our condiment of choice; consuming information on-demand, always on, and in an array of formats – into the way we practice the craft of communicator.
The media universe is expanding: Internet radio, streaming, podcasts, RSS, mobile phone, blogs, citizen journalism, wikis, mobile TV, photoblogs, self-publishing. Content everywhere.
A little stretching is in order.
PR Atrophy Sign 2: You believe the Internet is downstream from Mainstream Media (MSM).
July 7, 2005, A blogger’s entry begins, “The entire London Underground is closed…. Being blamed on a “power surge”…. Curious.”
Moments later. “Update. A bus exploded in Russell Square.”
And then, “Skynews is reporting '90 casualties' at Aldgate…”
What has to be the iconic image of the recent London bombings - shown in hundreds, if not thousands of “mainstream” publications and broadcast news - was born of a mobile phone, posted and reposted on moblogs, then to WikiNews. SkyNews, a UK online news site, picked it up and from there it went to the AP, print media and everywhere else in the mediasphere.
Online news sites and blog search engines were overloaded by people in urgent search of the latest news in London that day.
And, the next day the “mainstream” news was filled with stories - and hard-core realization - that citizen journalism is "The Media."
Mainstream media woke up that day.
Are you awake?
PR Atrophy Sign 3: You’re sure blogs are a fad and we are experiencing a journalism “bubble.”
The New York Times is melding their online and print newsrooms into a single newsroom staff.
Current TV, an independent cable and satellite TV channel, is where We are the producers. It follows the global pulse via Google and produces “Google Current,” a real-time TV view based on what the world is searching for, every half-hour 24/7. VC2 – viewer-created content - is an extension of the Current TV studio where anyone can join in and get paid, or simply watch and vote for what goes on TV.
Scoopt, an online service, has launched which sells “on the scene” mobile phone photos to news outlets.
CBS News launches a “build you own newscast” feature on CBSNews.com
I, Reporter is an initiative that teaches news editors how to use citizen reporters, and citizen reporters how to be reporters.
There are currently more than 900,000 blog posts every day.
Cyberjournalist.net lists 341 blogs by journalists, and 19 news sites that produce podcasts.
Steve Gillmor at ZDNet implies trade publications are fading, stating “The insistent voice of the blogosphere is beginning to dominate the conversation between vendors and customers.”
It isn’t froth. The ground is shifting. Get your sea legs.
PR Atrophy Sign 4: You don’t have a blogging policy.
Delta Airlines, Friendster, Starbucks, WellsFargo, Kmart have fired employees for blogging.
Your organization could be liable for unlawful termination, or open to Sarbanes-Oxley violations, or even trade disparagement because you and your blogging employees don’t have an understanding of the legal issues. And, these issues don’t stop at the front door of the corporate offices, they extend to personal, non-work related blogs.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is actively involved in assisting bloggers with knowing and exercising their rights in everything from intellectual property to labor laws related to blogging.
Lines are blurring between internal communication and external communications.
Get moving.
PR Atrophy Sign 5: Google is your first stop when you research online.
IceRocket, Technorati, Blogdigger, Yahoo’s My Web 2.0, PubSub, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Feedster are just a few of the new generation of search engines, powered by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and/or tagging.
Whether you know what RSS is or not – you are using it everyday via your online news sites. RSS powers the connectedness of blogs, search engines and even mainstream media. It should be powering your own connectedness to journalists, analysts, citizen journalists, your publics.
Tagging is the share-and-search mechanism of this We Generation. Online content is given context by how each individual viewer or publisher relates to it. The infinite web is being organized by Everyone into multi-dimensional views of the same content.
Information is finding you.
Lift your head. There are new channels.
PR Atrophy Sign 6: You provide media content in Print for Print, video for TV, audio for Radio.
Broadcast radio stations move to all-podcast content. Newspapers stream video news online. TV broadcasters publish blogs. Google partners to produce a TV show. Internet radio and broadcast radio embrace “visual radio.” Mobile phones deliver terrestrial radio. Web sites publish for mobile phones. Corporations, newspapers and TV create podcasts for expanded and original content.
All media is multimedia. All media is multimedia. All media is multimedia.
Think what I want, when I want it, how I want it.
“Edit for more, not less.” The Futre of News, The MediaCenter
Thanks for mentioning us!
Blake Rhodes
IceRocket.com
Posted by: blake | August 06, 2005 at 04:03 PM