media
15 Oct 2009
Breaking News: The Internet
ABC supremo Mark Scott finally gets new media. Sort of. At least he's way ahead of other Australian media executives, writes Ben Eltham, and that's a worry in itself
Last night I popped over to Melbourne University to see ABC boss Mark Scott deliver the AN Smith Lecture in Journalism. It was your usual Melbourne literary crowd, sprinkled with a few journos and even a couple of ABC Board members.Scott's lecture was rather pompously entitled "The Fall of Rome" (an apparent invitation to mix his historical metaphors) and described the now well known decline of the great media empires of the 19th and 20th centuries.
"We will surely look back on the 19th and 20th centuries and say that media was a great business to be in," Scott proclaimed. "Audiences hungry for news and entertainment. Powerful media organisations with deep pockets fighting to keep competitors out and profits in. The names are legendary: the Hearsts and the Grahams in the US. Beaverbrook and Rothermere in Britain. The Murdochs and the Packers here. Even the fictional names were legendary: Citizen Kane."
But, Scott continued, for those living under rocks for the past decade, times have changed. "The media Caesars of today seem largely out of solutions — and instead challenge reality by seeking to deny a revolution that has already taken place by attempting to use a power that no longer exists."
The speech largely proceeded in this vein as Scott took great pains to describe the bleeding obvious. Newspapers are struggling. Classifieds are migrating online. Young people are deserting old media. Twitter and Facebook are cool.
"When you look back on it, some fundamental weaknesses in the traditional publishing and broadcasting model were evident long before the internet revolution." Well, der.
While Scott's lecture may have seemed old hat to anyone who has actually been following the debate over the last decade, he nonetheless delivered some useful points. It's true that media policy in this country has been dominated by vested interests: "not much more than a tawdry chaos of compromises designed to appease the moguls," as Scott phrased it. It's also true that journalism can no longer rely on the succor of rich families to sustain itself in the face of imploding revenues.
And it's worth pointing out that for many in the audience this tissue of old news was a revelation. At the end of the speech, I turned to the person beside me, a lecturer from Melbourne University's journalism school, and asked her what she thought of the speech. She replied that Scott was perhaps the first senior media executive in Australia to articulate the current situation so straightforwardly. In the foyer, Sophie Cunningham from Meanjin, agreed.
If this is really the case, then old media is in bigger trouble than even Scott claims. Because the second half of Scott's speech contained very little in the way of new strategies or announcements. "Continuous news online"? Internet television? More blogs? Twitter? It's not rocket science. It's merely what everyone else — including old media outlets — is doing.
Instead we got a lot of new media and new economy nostrums. "All the rules have changed," he claimed, and "transformational thinking and only transformational thinking will bring a true critical analysis." Uh huh. "At the the ABC we are thinking of a world of 10,000 channels delivered to your TV set." Good. "Sit in meetings with people half your age and listen." Somehow, I doubt how thoroughly he has tested that one.
According to Scott, "Twitter might be where our future audiences and communities may choose to spend their media time, and we need to be there with our audiences." 140 characters of bravo!
As I watched Scott's speech and the ensuing questions, I began to get a sense of how clueless many media executives really are. I'm fairly certain Scott knows more about this stuff than, for example, Roger Corbett does. In fact, Scott pointed this out later in his speech, arguing that old thinking and internal barriers to reform are the biggest problems for media organisations. "We have seen the enemy, and it is us."
If Scott is among the savviest — and he may well be — then the path ahead for big media organisations in this country will be rocky indeed.
In the land of the blind, the man with a print-out of a Clay Shirky blog is king.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
Every interested journalist or writer has heard pretty much everything Mark Scott had to say before. The theme of every ‘future of journalism’ conference for the last two or three years has been ‘the media is no longer the same’.
The really interesting question (at least for publishers and writers - including new media outlets like New Matilda) is the one no one seems to be able to answer: where has all the money gone? Presumably it has simply gone into flat screen televisions as classified advertisers save a fortune selling their cars online, and into Las Vegas casinos as former media moguls spend the money they took with them when they had their mid-career crises.
Will the money ever come back? Will the punters ever be prepared to pay for good content online or, more importantly, will advertisers ever be prepared to fork out real money to peddle their wares to an online audience? Can’t see it myself, but I’d love to know if someone else can see a future business model in which the people who create and publish good stuff will be fairly recompensed.
If 10,000 TV channels is the best we have to look forward to from an apparent "forward thinker" then we are in trouble. What will be on those TV channels but more repeats? We don’t want more of the same old, we want innovation and change or media will stagnate and people will get their news from Twitter and other means that are actually being innovative.
If they want us to pay for online media, there will have to be a means of everyone and anyone paying - which means not credit card. That issue alone will be taxing enough for the brains that will have to devise a way for anyone and everyone to have the right to access media, without being automatically blocked because the bank don’t like their credit rating or because they are juveniles or migrants. Surely the point of a new version of media is access - and that means access to all, not just the select few.
You’ve basically taken the words out of my mouth salamander but I have to say that, I wouldn’t have said it that well. I have previously commented in newmatilda, that I have never bought news papers & I refuse to buy content online, I will get it free from the TV. From what I remember of Scott’s remarks at the convention, was that Murdoch can ask for money for online content but the ABC will still be for free, just as it always has. If the path for big media organisations are rocky due to the lack of consumer demand, they need to either shift with the times, find another outlet, or invest in TV.
Fine article Ben & as you are a journalist whats your opinion of the media’s future?
I don’t think you have anything to worry about, salamander.
When Murdoch talks about charging for access he seems to be forgetting how his own business model worked in the past. It was about free or relatively cheap access to content, with revenue generated from advertising. The billions James Packer has blown on casinos didn’t come from the cover price of the Women’s Weekly. We ‘paid’ with our eyeballs in our tacit agreement to look at the the ads - no credit card required.
If Murdoch does charge for access to his websites, all that will happen is the crowd (and advertisers) will go elsewhere. It’s not as though the Murdoch empire is awash with quality content that can’t be found in a million other places.
The question about where good content is going to come from remains, however. With advertising revenue spread across "10,000 TV channels" (which in part answers my initial question), who is going to have enough money to invest in new productions or professional journalism?
David Brewster - Freelance Writer
david@davidbrewster.com
www.davidbrewster.com
Charging for online content isn’t going to work because AAP will just rewrite everyone’s stories for everyone else, just as they do now. So News Ltd sites will still be able to run articles that are supposedly exclusive to Fairfax and vice versa. And why aren’t online ads worth as much as print ads? Is it just because print ad salespeople started this idea to save their own commissions?
www.newswithnipples.wordpress.com
KimPowell, the main reason for the convention was due to the reason of the media’s future & the fact that Murdoch & friends are taking the likes of AAP to court for plagiarism. They want someone to pay for the news content that is being spread freely on the internet.
Um, yeah, I get that… but why are online ads not worth very much?
www.newswithnipples.wordpress.com
KimPowell, I suspect that a good part of the reason is that online ads are trackable, so advertisers know exactly how much value they are getting. ‘Old’ advertising was able to con their clients about the value of their expensive ads because no one could really assess their effectiveness properly.
Another factor, of course, is that the web audience is much more dispersed than print and TV audiences used to be, so advertising revenue needs to be spread more thinly across a much larger slice of bread.
david@davidbrewster.com
www.davidbrewster.com
I was at the same lecture and it struck me how clueless media exectuives actually are. I realise this speech was for the public, for whom many of these issues are not ‘bleeding obvious’, despite Eltham’s claim. However, the vague and empty ‘transformational thinking’garble was when I began to switch off. It is indeed alarming to think that Scott is the ‘savviest’ of the bunch if harnessing Twitter is the best he can come up with.
Media Watch on ABC TV (Link http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/video/) had a good segment on the Murdoch & paid media content, quoting journalism as a thing of the past due to their common attitude. It start’s out showing Virginia, one of the shows compare’s, giving the finger a twirl near her ear about Barnaby Joice being Kooky but the camera caught her out doing it (busted). I can relate the same behavior with the likes of Mel & Coche on 7’s network & most of the other talk around the table news presentations that are on the air. We have to endure their over opinionated remarks, over & over again as the news is constantly repeated a thousand times per hour of broadcast. Media watch also made a point of the Murdochs big complaint about free media over privatized content.
I regularly write to major sections of the cowardly, unethical, irresponsible, dishonest, pro-US, pro-Zionist, holocaust-complicit, holocaust-ignoring, genocide-complicit, genocide-ignoring, politically correct racist (PC racist) ABC, informing them mostly about:
(A) the latest science about the Climate Emergency, the worsening Climate Holocaust and Climate Genocide (that will end up consuming 10 billion non-European lives this century), Climate Criminal Australia’s Climate Racism and Climate Genocide (our domestic plus exported per capita GHG pollution is 10 times the annual per capita of the World); and
(B) the latest authoritative data on the horrendous post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths and refugees associated with the on-going Palestinian Holocaust, Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Holocaust , Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories and due to Racist Zionists, Racist Zionism, US Alliance Democratic Imperialism (aka Democratic Nazism or Democratic Fascism) and racist Mainstream media non-reportage in the Western Murdochracies.
However the gutless ABC simply won’t report these horrendous realities e.g. that the post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now total 0.3 million, 2.3 million and 3-7 million, respectively; that top UK climate scientist demand a 6-8% annual GHG pollution REDUCTION whereas the Apartheid Labor Party Government is committed to an annual PLUS 2% increase in GHG pollution.
And, of course, the extreme right wing ABC simply won’t report that many top climate scientists are demanding an urgent return of atmospheric CO2 concentration to about 300 ppm.
However if you Search the ABC (here is the link: http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_ranks=20&coll… ) you will essentially not even find the following terms - let alone the horrendous statistics: Climate Holocaust, Climate Genocide, Climate Criminal, Climate Racism, Climate Genocide, Apartheid Labor, Racist Zionism, Racist Zionist, Palestinian Holocaust, Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Holocaust , Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide, Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories, Democratic Imperialism, Democratic Nazism, Democratic Fascism) Murdochracy, Murdochracies. (Google these terms and you will find that other media report these terms extensively and do not censor the concerns of decent anti-racist humanitarians, including decent, anti-racist Jews Against Racist Zionism, JARZ: http://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ) .
It would be a grievous insult to honest and ethical sex workers to describe the disgraceful, dishonest and unethical ABC by the words that immediately come to mind.
The ABC: Australian taxes at work for the benefit of war criminal racist Zionists (RZs), the genocidal, war criminal Unazi States of America and the Climate Criminals.
And yet the ABC is possibly the best of a bad lot when it comes to Mainstream media in Murdochracy Australia.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.