:: LNR Journalism ::

Want to kill the status quo? Innovate

Don't talk till your blue in the face, if you can't change the conditions, set the agenda yourself. (The inevitable will happen anyway.)

memeburn :: I was recently asked, “how do you find innovators?” It’s an odd question really, one that I hadn’t thought about before, but one that is valuable to think through. You have to dig deeper and think why innovations happen at all, and what the power structures are that make them be identified as innovative. After all, innovation is just a new way of doing things than what is currently the norm. In any industry, society or business there are status quo powers at play. These are generally legacy structures, setup for a time and place that needed that design. Think big media in broadcasting and print. How has it been disrupted by the internet, mobiles and social media in the last 10 years?

Continue to read Erik Hersman, memeburn.com

Can this journalist be replaced by software and mechanical turk? No, but they try.

TechnologyReview :: If you think your current boss is a drag, imagine being directed by a piece of software. - Why hire a knowledge worker when a swarm of low-skilled laborers will do?

Clipped from: mybossisarobot.com (share this clip)

An experiment being conducted by an alliance of journalists and computer scientists aims to combine the distributed human brainpower of Amazon's small-task outsourcing engine, Mechanical Turk, with a software boss pre-programmed with all the logic required to stitch myriad discrete human-accomplished tasks into something resembling the work of a single person.

(Short note: I don't believe that technology can be a replacement.)

Continue to read www.technologyreview.com - Can This Journalist Be Replaced by Software and Mechanical Turk? - Technology Review

Knight Foundation to open nation's first digital lab of its kind for journalists

A news innovation lab partnering journalists with computer scientists is setting up shop at Northwestern University in Evanston (U.S.). The idea is to create new and better digital tools for news gathering. The Knight Lab will be the first of its kind nationwide.

Continue to read - www.latimes.com - Northwestern, Knight Foundation to open nation's first digital lab of its kind for journalists - latimes.com

Vivid Magazines - Towards A 360° Reader's Experience

So many journalists recently wrote about iPad from Apple. But one aspect I haven't seen covered so far: a monopoly status of a market player is nice from a ROI (Return On Investment) point of view but not for the consumer. Why? - Let's have a look at the current situation. Publishers and Apple are still in a negotiation process which has not been finalized so far. Apple would not like to share customer data and of course they try to get as much revenue share as possible. Why not? As long as the iPad would be the only option in a market and publishers are under high pressure to deliver results Apple has an advantage.

But it is and was only a question of time (-to-market): it's curious to see how long it would take Apple's competitors to react. And no doubt it is necessary that more players enter the device market (iPhone & iPad) to offer alternatives. iPhone Apps are not the only answer to enrich the mobile experience and to make it more convenient. But Apple prevents technologies like Flash Light to run on their devices. And of course they will take appropriate measures to extend the timeline until HTML5 will be supported by Safari, the pre-installed browser on iPhones.

Two recent developments will have impact on how we will consume news tomorrow: HTML5 is rich of features, which will make additional software extensions like Flash replaceable. And the second technology with impact will be Adobe AIR.

What's Adobe AIR?

In short: it is a way to "use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems". Adobe AIR needs a software installation on your Mac or PC. But let's have a look at a real world case: Adobe and Condé Naste demo WIRED on Adobe Air shows that also Adobe would like to play an important role in the future of news. But watch it on your own:

Although the video is an impressive showcase of how a magazine like WIRED can make use of Adobe Air, still some questions were not answered: How long did it take to produce the WIRED demo? At what costs would it be possible to produce an edition on a regular base?

Today's News Platforms: A Closer Look at Allvoices.com

MediaShift Mark Glaser was in talks with Amra Tareen Ceo, Allvoices. The interview was recorded September 2009. I liked it because it helped me to look behind the scenes of an interesting startup.

You haven't heard of Allvoices yet? - Allvoices is a platform for citizen journalists. They offer an incentive program, so that editors will be paid based on the attractiviness of their content measured in terms of pageviews. They foster conversation with their users via email and take care of suggestions, errors, ideas, wishes and feature requests which will be handed over to a community manager.

Of course like all news platforms they're in search of exclusive content which is easier to market and which can also be delivered to major news platform. News are always geotagged, which helps to aggregate content due to the local context they cover. An algorithm checks for copyright infringements. But Alloices does not rely on machines alone the community itself provides with mechanism to assist in the quality approval process as well.

Their overal business model? Advertising is obvious and syndication is also one revenue path. Rankings drive traffic and comments grow the number of pageviews as much as audience awareness. At the time of the interview Allvoices admitted to be not cash positive. Wonder how it looks today.

Review: 1Cast - Personalized Video News Casts

Kirkland (Washington-US) based Onecast, Inc. offers personalized news feeds or "casts" via its web and mobile-based video platform, which can be watched on your iPhone or Android device.

Casts are automatically updated with the latest clips from sources like BBC Worldwide, Agence France Presse, Reuters, CBC and Al Jazeera as they come in. News are available online just minutes after the original broadcast. Service is currently available only to US based customers.

1Cast is a typical News2.0 application which offers technology (personalization, video distribution to web and mobile, near-to-original broadcast clips) but without unique content. Without unique and relevant content sources the service is highly vulnerable. Also competition in this part of the news value chain of technology platforms is too strong in my opinion. Unless you have no exclusive access to content, technology alone will never be the road to success. News3.0 differs from this approach since unique content providers, the journalists themselves, are major players in the future of news.

From Print to Online to Print - The Changing Value Chain

An article from Read Write Web¹ rose my interest today. It was Google's announcement that all content from Google Books is now searchable from the Search Options panel the company introduced earlier this year. That was not a surprise at all. But what's the big picture?

Just one day before, September 17th On Demand Books announced Google has signed an agreement with On Demand Books (PDF), which grants them access to Google's vast library of public domain books. Now if you're interested in a book which is public domain you can easily print it on demand - at least at any of the places which have already an Espresso Book Machine^®. Now a book of 3-400 pages can be printed with a speed of 145 pages per minute and at a cost of about 1 cent per page within 3 minutes. In our sample for $4. The machine can be purchased for as little as $100,000. A demonstration of the machine can be watched online at YouTube: The Espresso Book Machine.

"Unfortunately" the current legal issue with all non-public domain books is that they're protected by copyright which protects them from being illegally copied - at least that is the mission of the law. What would happen if this barrier falls?

Secondly: let's think of an author who does not longer want to wait for her book to be published. She signs a contract with Google for a revenue share when her digital book available in the Google Book "store" will be printed on an Espresso Book Machine^®. Google becomes Amazon but with the power of a publisher.

⁽¹⁾ Source: RWW on searching Google Books

Impact of the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement

The German Government sent an Amicus Curiae document over to the NY court yesterday to intervene against the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement⁽¹⁾. It expresses the concerns of the German Goverment against the worldwide impact the settlement will have. The settlement of a class action lawsuit was brought by authors and publishers, claiming that Google has violated their copyrights and those of other Rightsholders of Books and Inserts, by scanning their Books, creating an electronic database and displaying short excerpts without the permission of the copyright holders.⁽²⁾

The problem: the German law doesn't know "class" as legal term. The current settlement would effect authors or right holders in general (the "class") and has a severe impact on service providers of similar services outside of the US as well.
Although IP access to digital books will use IP based geotargeting to restrict retrieval of information, this type of access control can easily be bypassed. Secondly, Google achieved a competitive advantage because it did not ask the rightholders before it started the Google Books initiative. Alternatives like EUROPEANA and libreka were at a disadvantage. 
The German government argues in addition, that the settlement would infringe the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works ("Revidierte Berner Übereinkunft")⁽³⁾ and the WIPO Copyright Treaty - WCT⁽⁴⁾.

For sure the current legal solution would cement the power of one company in the way how it can handle copyright in the near future neglecting competition in this market. That's the reason why also other major market players Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo are cooperating against Google's recent activities. But also copyright holders might have to be active in the future to defend their rights.

⁽¹⁾ BMJ - Amicus Curiae - Press Information in (German)

⁽²⁾ Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement

⁽³⁾ Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

⁽⁴⁾ WIPO Copyright Treaty - WCT