Technology360

Mobcasting the news

At NPR, we have occasional brown bag lunch (is there any other kind of lunch at NPR?) presentations.  Today's was extremely informative and given by our social media expert, Andy Carvin (twitter @acarvin).  His topic was Mobcasting the News: Crowdsourcing, Volunteers and Journalism (slides) and audio.  Recommended.  --Dennis

One Old Media Brand That Gets It

Frédéric Filloux has some important things to say about the importance of content distribution via API and some nice things to say about NPR's implementation of it.  All the more remarkable since it was published by CBS News (also in Filloux's Monday Note under a different title). 

He writes:

... But NPR’s most remarkable achievement remains its digital diversification, based on two basic concepts: ubiquity of platforms and openness. Coming back to the iPhone app, it relies on NPR’s API created just a year ago. In this issue of the Monday Note, we explored the advantages of opening news content through API (Applications Programming Interface). APIs allow anyone to tap into structured content, by sending requests aimed at specific items. APIs are not platform-dependant: the XML feed can either go to an iPhone application or a website. ...

Be sure to follow the link above, to a post titled, Opening the News.  --Dennis

Cheap is the new free

The most important task before those of us in traditional media is adapting to the disruptive economic change that's before us.  I've made a number of posts about this and there is a lot of creative thinking in the area.  See for example, Kevin Kelly's essential Better Than Free post, which I've been promoting for quite a while.

But I'm sure that I've been missing quite a bit because I'm woefully slow in getting through my blogroll these days.  I was about six weeks late in finding the post of this title from my friend Stephen Hill, a long-time successful practitioner of paid content associated with public radio.  In linking to a recommended post on the 37signals blog, he writes:

... But the fact is, we had no choice. No one was going to give us any kind of funding, and our traffic numbers made any thought of advertising support a fantasy.  ¶  That said, it has taken us a long time to understand the value calculation that users make when deciding whether to pay. We have found that the entire area is very nuanced, and the relationship between free, paid, and "freemium" models takes careful experimentation to get right. We wound up with 3 major levels of service and no less than 25 different pricing options! (see PLANS at www.hos.com) ...

Link:  Spatial Relations.  --Dennis

A media business model that works?

Retweeting here (sort of) a Scott Hanley (WDUQ GM, Pittsburgh) entry on Twitter tonight:

sehanley A media business model closest to working -- build a large group of followers , have trust,hope, ask when you need it http://bit.ly/15422R

Follow the link and you'll see a thoughtful blog post from Scott in which he says:

... The real power behind public radio's future is more than just the commodity of our content. It is the relationships we have built and sustained.  ¶  For public radio (and media), our "business model" has been built from the act of service and the voluntary support of people who believe in and rely upon that service. ...

In these tough times when both WDUQ and NPR are tightening belts, the station is taking the ususual step this week of allowing contributors to decline the traditional "thank-you gift" during its pledge drive "and instead have 10% of their pledge sent as an additional gift to NPR."

It will be very interesting to see what happens.  --Dennis

Fair Use Online

The Center for Social Media at American University has a video and related report, Code of Best Practicies in Fair Use for Online Video.  In spite of the "tv-ist" title, it all applies to audio also, of course.  Also check out the video, Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend.  --Dennis