Glory in Virtue

Nothing too different from what we’ve heard before here, but I’m always fascinated to hear the thoughts of decision makers in the media – especially from the likes of Rusbridger, whose Guardian.co.uk is, for me, the best online newspaper offering in the UK.

(Damn WordPress won’t let me embed videos from Vimeo, so here’s the link directly to Vimeo)

The interview is from an event at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin. Thanks to Carta for posting it.

So just to summarise a few of Rusbridger’s points:

• Reader comments from the web are valuable for harvesting information to improve newspaper content
• There will be a concentration of media ownership in the future
• Quality journalism will need to be subsidised
• The Victorian chain of newspaper distribution is a broken model – too much money is lost in the chain of supply, falling ad revenues and declining audiences
• Modern journalism is about dialogue, not monologue
• Twitter is useful for crowdsourcing information for content, and then distributing that content

So are media houses in the future going to be like ‘recycling points’ for content? Taking junk from their readership, recycling it into attractive and digestible content, and then re-distributing? I guess this is arguably how the media has always worked, but now the relationship between producer and consumer is more explicit.

It’s clear that no-one still really knows what the digital age has in store for the future of media. Some of my favourite soundbites from Rusbridger: “Occasionally we see glimmerings of how it’s going to work” and “There’s a blurring of the distinction between journalist and reader”.

Vaguity at its best, and this is from one of the best minds in the industry. But I find this strangely comforting, because the digital age is re-defining journalism, and re-defining the distribution and consumption of news as we know it. And we’re still really at the beginning.

Thanks to Emily Bell for the link.

Never was a shallower phrase spoken, but this soundbite from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity – ‘It’s what you like, not what you’re like, that counts in a relationship’ – has always resonated with me, maybe not in real life, but certainly online.

There’s no doubt Hornby had his tongue firmly in cheek when he put these words in the mouth of his intimacy-shy hero, Rob Fleming. Of course, how can someone be defined by their hobbies, musical tastes and choice of conversation? Well it all depends on how cynical you are about humanity, but it sure counts above anything on the Internet.

Whether we’re crowdsourcing for information, sharing links through delicious, or blogging about our top five books, our personal opinions are the very lifeblood of social networking. But of course, these opinions need to have value and be useful, and be much more than just bursts of hot air.

It was Mike Arauz‘s latest blog post, ‘Spectrum of Online Friendship‘, that got me thinking about this. Friendship online is a very different beast to friendship in real life, to the extent that its values are often completely inverted. (more…)

So Wired magazine is having a second crack at launching in the UK – this time under the leadership of editor, David Rowan.

This has been 11 years in-the-waiting for Condé Nast, who bought the US technology magazine from Wired Ventures in 1998. And it’s hardly surprising it’s waited so long, considering Wired’s first attempt at a UK launch in 1995, which resulted in failure.

Cover of Wired UK sample issue

What is surprising, however, is the timing of the launch. Why has Condé Nast waited until now – the most fragile financial period in recent history – to establish a new technology magazine, when it’s up against a culture of successful blogs, dedicated to breaking the same content, and a media landscape scattered with the corpses of failed print publications? (more…)