Se ha hablado mucho de cómo ha cambiado el escenario de los medios de comunicación en la era Internet y hoy, con el advenimiento de la Web 2.0 - o más bien Web 3.0 según propone Dan Gillmor - esa World Live Web donde nace el Periodismo 3.0 que ha descrito Juan Varela, son ya muchas las voces que se oyen, en la propia industria de los medios de comunicación tradicionales, advirtiendo de los peligros que tiene obviar lo que está ocurriendo entre las nuevas generaciones y su actitud hacia la información, con lo que ello significará para los modelos de negocio de los gigantes mediáticos a la luz de las tendencias que se viven en una industria que ya no es lo que era.
Esta semana The Economist publicaba, motivado en gran parte por las declaraciones que realizara Rupert Murdoch ante la American Society of Newspaper Editors, "Yesterday's papers" un artículo donde, exponiendo algunas observaciones sobre las que ya he incidido aquí antes, se quiere dar naturaleza de hito histórico a las declaraciones del magnate americano; unas declaraciones muy directas en que llamaba a toda la industria a aceptar el cambio que se estaba produciendo en los hábitos de los consumidores y buscar formas nuevas de crear valor en el negocio de la información.
Murdoch mostraba sus conclusiones sobre los datos del estudio realizado por la Carnegie Coporation, publicados no hace mucho en el Carnegie Reporter bajo el significativo título de "Adandoning the news", que ya comenté aquí en su momento. También se hacía eco de las predicciones que hacía Philip Meyer en su obra The Vanishing Newspaper: en abril de 2040, el último lector de periódicos reciclará el íltimo ejemplar. El magnate de los medios de comunicación, no se limitó a meter el miedo en el cuerpo a su audiencia, sino que buscó motivos,
"There are a number of reasons for our inertia in the face of this advance. First, newspapers as a medium for centuries enjoyed a virtual information monopoly [...] Second, even after the advent of television, a slow but steady decline in readership was masked by population growth that kept circulations reasonably intact. Third, even after absolute circulations started to decline in the 1990s, profitability did not."
así como similitudes y diferencias con la amenaza que supuso en su momento la llegada de la radio o, posteriormente, la televisión, mostrándose convencido de que la industria dispone de los medios y los recursos necesarios para adaptarse y sobrevivir a esta nueva situación,
"[...] Like the advent of radio before it, television was always going to be at best an alternative way to get the news, and at worst a direct competitor. There was no way to make it a part, or even a partner, of the paper. That is manifestly not true of the internet. And all of our papers are living proof
Despite this, I?m still confident of our future, both in print and via electronic delivery platforms [...] We have the experience, the brands, the resources, and the know-how to get it done. We have unique content to differentiate ourselves in a world where news is becoming increasingly commoditized. And most importantly, we have a great new partner to help us reach this new consumer -- the internet. "
Pero dejó muy claro cuál era el desafío al que se enfrentaban,
"The challenge, however, is to deliver that news in ways consumers want to receive it. Before we can apply our competitive advantages, we have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions, and start thinking like our newest consumers."
haciendo un retrato bastante completo, de lo que quieren los lectores,
"They want news on demand, continuously updated. They want a point of view about not just what happened, but why it happened. They want news that speaks to them personally, that affects their lives. [...] And they want the option to go out and get more information, or to seek a contrary point of view. And finally, they want to be able to use the information in a larger community ? to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet the people who think about the world in similar or different ways. "
y proponiendo como objetivo irrenunciable, enfocarse en su presencia en la red, consiguiendo que la gente vuelva a empezar el día con su periódico y su café, pero a través de su acceso a Internet.
"The challenge for us [...] is to create an internet presence that is compelling enough for users to make us their home page. Just as people traditionally started their day with coffee and the newspaper, in the future, our hope should be that for those who start their day online, it will be with coffee and our website."
A pesar de los esfuerzos que se están haciendo para producir informaciones de forma contínua, reconocía Murdoch, hay que hacer más,
"But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn?t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.
At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy -- chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can?t vouch for the quality of people who aren?t regularly employed by us ? and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve, so long as our readers understand the clear distinction between bloggers and our journalists.
To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text ? they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting ? and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.
And with the growing proliferation of broadband, the emphasis online is shifting from text only to text with video. The future is soon upon us in this regard. Google and Yahoo already are testing video search while other established cable brands, including FOX News, are accompanying their text news stories with video clips.
What this means for us as newspapers is the opportunity to partner with credible video programmers to provide an infinitely better product. More access to news; more visually entertaining news and advertising product; deeper and more penetrating coverage."
Al final, Rupert Murdoch ha querido dejar muy claro que el problema fundamental no es la tecnología, que siempre ha jugado a favor de la prensa, sino el cambio de mentalidad que exige el nuevo escenario,
"What I worry about much more is our ability to make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands. As I said earlier, what is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product. Unfortunately, however, I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is ?Do we have the story? rather than ?Does anyone want the story??
El cambio que viven los medios de comunicación es muy profundo; los blogs, tal como señala The Economist, son sólo una de las herramientas que aparecen en escena:
"Blogs, moreover, are but one item on a growing list of new media tools that the internet makes available. Wikis are collaborative web pages that allow readers to edit and contribute. This, to digital immigrants, may sound like a recipe for anarchic chaos, until they visit, for instance, wikipedia.org, an online encyclopaedia that is growing dramatically richer by the day through exactly this spontaneous (and surprisingly orderly) collaboration among strangers. Photoblogs are becoming common; videoblogs are just starting. Podcasting (a conjunction of iPod, Apple's iconic audio player, and broadcasting) lets both professionals and amateurs produce audio files that people can download and listen to."
y con todo ese arsenal, surgen nuevas formas de hacer periodismo, con un "tono" muy diferente de los tradicionales periódicos de papel y que pueden alcanzar más relevancia que aquéllos, echando mano de modelos de negocio que van desde la publicidad contextual a las donaciones o suscripciones... El caso es que, a pesar de que podamos encontrar de todo en la blogosfera o que, como afirma el semanario británico, la mayoría de los blogs no no valga la pena leerlos, la industria debería tomarse más en serio este fenómeno de los weblogs si no quieren ver como se cumple la predicción Meyer antes de tiempo.
"It is tempting, but wrong, for the traditional mainstream media [...] to belittle this sort of thing. It is true, for instance, that the vast majority of blogs are not worth reading and, in fact, are not read (although the same is true of much in traditional newspapers). Another dangerous cliché is to consider bloggers intrinsically parasitic on (and thus, ultimately, no threat to) the traditional news business. [...] there is nothing to suggest that bloggers cannot also do original reporting."
Esta semana The Economist publicaba, motivado en gran parte por las declaraciones que realizara Rupert Murdoch ante la American Society of Newspaper Editors, "Yesterday's papers" un artículo donde, exponiendo algunas observaciones sobre las que ya he incidido aquí antes, se quiere dar naturaleza de hito histórico a las declaraciones del magnate americano; unas declaraciones muy directas en que llamaba a toda la industria a aceptar el cambio que se estaba produciendo en los hábitos de los consumidores y buscar formas nuevas de crear valor en el negocio de la información.
Murdoch mostraba sus conclusiones sobre los datos del estudio realizado por la Carnegie Coporation, publicados no hace mucho en el Carnegie Reporter bajo el significativo título de "Adandoning the news", que ya comenté aquí en su momento. También se hacía eco de las predicciones que hacía Philip Meyer en su obra The Vanishing Newspaper: en abril de 2040, el último lector de periódicos reciclará el íltimo ejemplar. El magnate de los medios de comunicación, no se limitó a meter el miedo en el cuerpo a su audiencia, sino que buscó motivos,
"There are a number of reasons for our inertia in the face of this advance. First, newspapers as a medium for centuries enjoyed a virtual information monopoly [...] Second, even after the advent of television, a slow but steady decline in readership was masked by population growth that kept circulations reasonably intact. Third, even after absolute circulations started to decline in the 1990s, profitability did not."
así como similitudes y diferencias con la amenaza que supuso en su momento la llegada de la radio o, posteriormente, la televisión, mostrándose convencido de que la industria dispone de los medios y los recursos necesarios para adaptarse y sobrevivir a esta nueva situación,
"[...] Like the advent of radio before it, television was always going to be at best an alternative way to get the news, and at worst a direct competitor. There was no way to make it a part, or even a partner, of the paper. That is manifestly not true of the internet. And all of our papers are living proof
Despite this, I?m still confident of our future, both in print and via electronic delivery platforms [...] We have the experience, the brands, the resources, and the know-how to get it done. We have unique content to differentiate ourselves in a world where news is becoming increasingly commoditized. And most importantly, we have a great new partner to help us reach this new consumer -- the internet. "
Pero dejó muy claro cuál era el desafío al que se enfrentaban,
"The challenge, however, is to deliver that news in ways consumers want to receive it. Before we can apply our competitive advantages, we have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions, and start thinking like our newest consumers."
haciendo un retrato bastante completo, de lo que quieren los lectores,
"They want news on demand, continuously updated. They want a point of view about not just what happened, but why it happened. They want news that speaks to them personally, that affects their lives. [...] And they want the option to go out and get more information, or to seek a contrary point of view. And finally, they want to be able to use the information in a larger community ? to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet the people who think about the world in similar or different ways. "
y proponiendo como objetivo irrenunciable, enfocarse en su presencia en la red, consiguiendo que la gente vuelva a empezar el día con su periódico y su café, pero a través de su acceso a Internet.
"The challenge for us [...] is to create an internet presence that is compelling enough for users to make us their home page. Just as people traditionally started their day with coffee and the newspaper, in the future, our hope should be that for those who start their day online, it will be with coffee and our website."
A pesar de los esfuerzos que se están haciendo para producir informaciones de forma contínua, reconocía Murdoch, hay que hacer más,
"But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn?t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.
At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy -- chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can?t vouch for the quality of people who aren?t regularly employed by us ? and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve, so long as our readers understand the clear distinction between bloggers and our journalists.
To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text ? they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting ? and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.
And with the growing proliferation of broadband, the emphasis online is shifting from text only to text with video. The future is soon upon us in this regard. Google and Yahoo already are testing video search while other established cable brands, including FOX News, are accompanying their text news stories with video clips.
What this means for us as newspapers is the opportunity to partner with credible video programmers to provide an infinitely better product. More access to news; more visually entertaining news and advertising product; deeper and more penetrating coverage."
Al final, Rupert Murdoch ha querido dejar muy claro que el problema fundamental no es la tecnología, que siempre ha jugado a favor de la prensa, sino el cambio de mentalidad que exige el nuevo escenario,
"What I worry about much more is our ability to make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands. As I said earlier, what is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product. Unfortunately, however, I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is ?Do we have the story? rather than ?Does anyone want the story??
El cambio que viven los medios de comunicación es muy profundo; los blogs, tal como señala The Economist, son sólo una de las herramientas que aparecen en escena:
"Blogs, moreover, are but one item on a growing list of new media tools that the internet makes available. Wikis are collaborative web pages that allow readers to edit and contribute. This, to digital immigrants, may sound like a recipe for anarchic chaos, until they visit, for instance, wikipedia.org, an online encyclopaedia that is growing dramatically richer by the day through exactly this spontaneous (and surprisingly orderly) collaboration among strangers. Photoblogs are becoming common; videoblogs are just starting. Podcasting (a conjunction of iPod, Apple's iconic audio player, and broadcasting) lets both professionals and amateurs produce audio files that people can download and listen to."
y con todo ese arsenal, surgen nuevas formas de hacer periodismo, con un "tono" muy diferente de los tradicionales periódicos de papel y que pueden alcanzar más relevancia que aquéllos, echando mano de modelos de negocio que van desde la publicidad contextual a las donaciones o suscripciones... El caso es que, a pesar de que podamos encontrar de todo en la blogosfera o que, como afirma el semanario británico, la mayoría de los blogs no no valga la pena leerlos, la industria debería tomarse más en serio este fenómeno de los weblogs si no quieren ver como se cumple la predicción Meyer antes de tiempo.
"It is tempting, but wrong, for the traditional mainstream media [...] to belittle this sort of thing. It is true, for instance, that the vast majority of blogs are not worth reading and, in fact, are not read (although the same is true of much in traditional newspapers). Another dangerous cliché is to consider bloggers intrinsically parasitic on (and thus, ultimately, no threat to) the traditional news business. [...] there is nothing to suggest that bloggers cannot also do original reporting."
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