Rji-chaos-2
Contents
DAY TWO: "Business, Technology and the Media: Charting a Course Through Chaos"
Running notes from Bill Densmore from the second day of the two-day symposium, "Business, Technology and the Media: Charting a Course Through Chaos," at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Missouri School of Journalism. There may be some typos in the moment, which we'll go back and correct later so consider this a work in progress! Also, there's a CoverItLive blog stream underway: WATCH LIVE VIDEO STREAM AND LIVE BLOG
This week's event is an initiative of the interdisciplinary Center for the Digital Globe (CDiG), the Alfred Friendly Foundation and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI). It involves about 50 international industry leaders in media, technology and business. The idea is to create new business models and it's organized by Randy Smith, Donald W. Reynolds Chair of Business Journalism. Among participants: Mark VandenBrink, vice president of technology solutions for Samsung America; Beth Polish, senior vice president of Hearst Corporate Innovation; Ochieng Rapuro, managing editor of Kenya^Ys Business Daily newspaper; Jim Kennedy, vice president of strategy for The Associated Press; Vin Capone, development executive for Apple; Beth Keck, senior director for WalMart; Jin-Yong Park, assistant editor for Hankook-Ilbo (The Korea Times)and Phil Aucutt, managing partner for WR Holdings and president of Junit, LLC. (For a full list visit http://www.rjionline.org/cdig )
Day Two: Developing new business models and and viable focus areas
Venture capitalist Alan Veeck is leading today's session set up this way: Six round tables assembled in Room 100-A of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
THOUGHT STARTERS
- What value do news and information provide people in their daily life?
- If people were to pay news and information organizations to do important jobs in their lives, what would those jobs be?
- What value do people get out of creating, sharing or passing on news and information? Whom do they share it with and why?
- What role do you imagine for journalists in the news and information marketplace and what role for others?
- Think about the way a company you admire makes money outside of the news space. What news and information business might you build using its business model?
- Instead of serving everyone (the public), can you define one set of people or a community that would especially value or need your news and information service?
- How are these people getting theire news and information needs met today, if at all?
- What solutions can you create to preserve quality journalism in the next week, two years and in 2020?
The six tables have finished coming up with draft business ideas and now we'll record their presentations:
TABLE ONE BUSINESS IDEAS
- NewsSense addresses people who are not regular news readers. Gets people into civic news; read it without leaving the site; ads appear as you are reading this article. contextual news
- Digitization Agency -- Transforming the local advertising departments of newspapers, radio, into a full-service ad department to serve retailers. More of a service agent rather than buying space. Franchised agency if the newspaper doesn't want to do it.
- Micropayments proxy -- Take a sample of cohorts and give them access to all kinds of information to test what they will pay. You get one subscription to WSJ, everyone installs a browser plug in so they are going to pay somehow through micropayments. WSJ lets them through with proxy subscription.
Skoler: "This seems to be an idea if you don't create it, someone else will."
- Newsfeed with Age Filter (Kid's News) -- A filtered news source that you would pay.
- Test news service for young children who have cell phones. An educational add on for the cell phone so you get little news blips.
Clyde Bentley: "Preroll-- you have to read a news story before you can text."
- Opinion pool -- Reverse wire service. Editorial pages are overwhelmed with submissions. Creates a central service where opinion providers pay a fee to appear on a rolling edited log where their stuff can appear in a newspaper. Papers will be edited and balance and presented on a member-only website. Editors can communicate with op-ed providers.
Q-AND-A ON TABLE ONE'S IDEAS
Stephanie Padgett: Does this mean you can buy your way onto an editorial page?
PR Newswire and ProfNet do this already, just not specifically for editorial pages
We need data on micropayments.
Padgett -- Digitization Agency is already underway. Alan Veeck says let's remove this.
TABLE TWO BUSINESS IDEAS
- Data Crunch Inc. -- Most of newspaper industry doesn't have resources to crunch data. This is a service play to help smaller and mid-sized newspapers. Deliver interactive widget to paper so people could look at data. (SKOLER/VEECK Concern: Trying to get money from an industry that's dying).
- Contextual ad exchange -- Separate local from national visitors. News industry sets up exchange and bundles stories about new TVs. Breaks down news/ad wall. Bundle by categories, serve contextual ads around that. Cutting Google out. Aggregate content, not person, only for selling advertising. (PADGETT COMMENT: Yahoo is down this path for newspapers).
- My universe" -- Giving companies information about me so that they will push to me information that matters to me. "I define what I want. I pay for that, because I get only what I'm interested in. I say who I am, what I am interested in. I'm not speaking about demographics. Feed me what I need to know. News and ad personalization.
- Global citizen -- Can be national, international, local. Personalized news very specific for global issues. There is no global newspaper right now. Talking about a global publisher, covering global events and things that affect the globe itself. Compared to GlobalPost.com, but focused and curated on big issues, emphasis on the citizen of the globe aspect.
GLOBAL CITIZEN IS PICKED AS TOP CHOICE OF TABLE TWO
