Milepost: Flipboard passes 100 million users

Flipboard, founded in 2009 as a personalized digital app recently announced passing two mileposts - passing 100 million users in December 2013, and hosting more than 5 million individual online magazines.

The ability of users to individually curate online magazines with content from various net sources was added with last March's major upgrade to Flipboard 2.0.  At the time, Flipboard had 50 million users.  The company expects that the expanded platform and search capabilities will have Flipboard passing 150 million users within the year.

"You will see us [in 2014] start to enhance our discovery capabilities, making the discovery capabilities work with all these magazines that people are creating, so that you will be able to discover this stuff,"  (Flipboard founder Mark) McCue says.

To be transparent - I've currently got five Flipboard personal magazines, one in conjunction with/ supplement to this blog JEMS, a limited-term supplement connected with my trip to CES this year JEMS@CES2014.  A third service mag is Media & Audience Research Reports, which links to white papers and research reports available online.  Two more personal curations are The Esoteric Bits and Serendipitous Video.

Source -  Personalized digital magazine app Flipboard aims for 150 million users, The Guardian

Sandy's Media Impact

The reports/projections are coming in -

• Pivotal Research Group's Brian Wieser suggests Sandy's disruption of electronic media will cost the industry around $500 million in ad make-goods. His revised forecast for 2012's growth in ad revenues - 0%.  That's despite a revised forecast of $3 billion in political advertising.
• General Sentiment argues that added social media use linked to Sandy will generate an additional $80 million in ad revenues ($60 million for Twitter, $12 million for news media sites, and the rest generated by other social media platforms.  For comparison, last year's Hurricane Irene generated about $18 million in added revenues.
• The FCC indicated that Sandy toppled or otherwise disabled a quarter of cell phone towers in the Northeast U.S.  Given the infrastructure disruption, the FCC noted that more towers will drop out of the grid as backup generators run out of fuel or damaged electronics fail.
• Sandy interrupted newspaper printing in New Jersey and hampered distribution of what newspapers could get printed, flooded online media group Gawker's web servers, the Huffington Post to go dark for a morning before it moved to Tumblr (joining myriad other Gawker and local media websites), forced the AP to move its offices and operations, and knocked a number of AM radio stations off the air, according to a NY Times story.  Many newsrooms went virtual, asking their reporters and editors to work from home. In anticipation of delivery problems, both the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal temporarily suspended the paywalls for their online editions.

 Meanwhile, there's an interesting post at Forbes.com on the changes in news and reporting displayed in covering Hurricane Sandy.  Steven Rosenbaum argues that while he watched media coverage of the storm, he was struck by the speed, volume, and value of news coverage.  And the contributions by "citizen journalists" -

local news anchors scrolling through tweets to pull out and ad lib real-time neighborhood reports, the sheer numbers of photos and videos dumped unfiltered onto the Web (from both the public and news organizations), local officials webcasting updates on the storm and their responses - as well as the rapid collection, curation, and archiving of Sandy-related content.
  The ‘HurricaneSandy.magnify.net‘ effort, for example, already has more than seven thousand videos - organized, categorized, and searchable.  Rosenbaum ended the post with his thoughts:

So, the question is – does this replace professional journalism? Far from it. UGC Newsgathering adds sources, POV, and reach.  But it also adds noise, and inaccuracy, and fakes. Tons of fake photoshop images. Tons of false reports about water on the floor of the stock exchange, or other rumors amplified by the speed of the social web.
  So, going forward, we need the power and voice of UGC news, as well as the curatorial tools and fact checking chops of working Journalists to help us filter signal from noise.
  Welcome to the new world of media.  Where the volume is massive,  and the filters are human. It’s a new way to think of news,  but it’s the way we’re going to in the future.

Sources -   Superstorm Throws Sand In Face Of Ad Economy, Reduces '12 Ad Growth to Zero, MediaDailyNews
Lost Media Revenue For Sandy: $500 Million, MediaDailyNews
Sandy Took Out 25% Of Cell Towers, MediaDailyNews
Storm Sends News Media Scrambling, NY Times
Media. The Storm. And How Sandy Changes Reporting Forever,  Forbes.com

Big Data and Journalism

With the rise of cheap computing and data storage has come the ability to measure and store huge amounts of data.  What's coming along a bit more slowly is the interest in, and ability to make use of all of that data.  Another jump in the ability to make use of all that info came with distributed computing - first with standalone projects like SETI@home, which used the processing power of millions of home computers to process billions of pieces of data (2 billion so far), and now the ability to harness the thousands of virtual computers in the Cloud.

So what is  Big Data and what does it have to do with the future of journalism?  The "Big Data" concept refers to the tools and processes for managing and using large datasets.  The idea of data-driven journalism, has been around for decades, but for the most part been limited to focused use of datasets to answer specific questions.  And, quite frankly, it's been severely limited by most journalist's seemingly inherent antipathy to numbers and math, as well as the decline in investigative journalism.

More recently, the concept of database journalism has emerged.  Unlike data-driven journalism, the idea of database journalism is to aggregate the materials collected by journalists into databases, which can then be used to spot trends or provide local illustrations for local versions of stories.

Neither of these fit the idea of Big Data, however.  What the Las Vegas Sun is doing with data may qualify, though - they exploit the massive amounts of audience metric generated by their online edition to suggest coverage, link to public databases to generate real-time informational maps of things like police reports, real estate listings, and retail hours  for local editions, and used public and online databases to research a story on local healthcare.

But there is the potential for much more - particularly in today's age of big data and huge document dumps (often designed to hide the big stories from easy access).  Only traditional journalism hasn't had a lot of interest in, or ability to exploit, Big Data.  From various Wikileaks dumps to the release of Stimulus-funded projects data, to Sarah Palin's emails, journalists have let others do the analysis and largely just reported what they were told (if they reported it at all).  That's a shame, because there is an unprecedented amount of publicly available information on government activities at all levels, campaign contributions and links between big money and "independent" public interest groups that should make a "watchdog" press drool.  Not to mention how monitoring search engines and social media could alert journalists to emerging issues and hot topics.  (For example, Google does a faster and better job of tracking flu outbreaks than the CDC, simply by monitoring searches for "flu remedies" and "flue symptoms.").

If journalism is to have a future, they need to do more than simply report what others say and do - they need to originate news, add value to stories, and reveal the needle in the haystack.  And doing that through Big Data, through the use and analysis of available information, is becoming easier and cheaper.  Will journalists acquire the interest and skills to do so, or will they leave that to others? (and in doing so render themselves even more irrelevant).

Source -  Big Data: Why All the Fuss?  InformationWeek Global CIO

Expanding "Citizen Journalism"

The basics of the AP story don't seem bad at first - "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding a $4.1 million grant to American Public Media to expand its network of "citizen sources" that help provide local news coverage."

Going to the APM website, you find that APM is primarily a program producer, with a bit of public activism thrown in.  The "network of citizen sources" refers to their Public Insight Network, which basically lets people volunteer to be sources for journalists at news organizations affiliated with the network.  It looks, from their examples, to be a site for people who are looking to provide "first-person accounts" promoting themselves or some cause to volunteer to be a source - one who can add "context, depth, humanity, and relevance to news stories".  A bit different than the "knowledgable experts" or "citizen journalists" mentioned in the grant story and headline.  APM's Bill Gray is pretty clear about their purpose and focus in identifying sources:

"Rather than relying on the experts, you can find real people."

Now that's a journalistic standard to be proud of.

And what will their $4.1 million add? The stated purpose is to add another 100,000 "sources" and 50 new affiliated newsrooms - but since both sources and newsrooms volunteer themselves, and the Public Insight Network seems little more than a searchable database, it's not clear at all where the money's going.  Sounds like there's a good story here for a true citizen journalist.

Source: American Public Media gets $4.1 million grant for citizen journalism,  TwinCities.com

CNN's iReport Turns Five, Hopes to go Social

Five years ago, CNN created the iReport website as a way for individuals and citizen journalists to post story ideas, photos, and videos.  And, as the cynical might add, to get free content that they can exploit (the Terms of Use say that by posting material to the site, you are granting CNN a global license to use the content however it wishes without paying for it).  The site has been modestly successful, generating more than half a million submissions (less than 10% is examined and vetted by CNN), and a few submissions from people at big breaking news events that made it to the main news outlet.  They've also used it fairly effectively to generate material for larger projects or stories through the addition of an "Assignment Desk" seeking specific contributions.
Even so, innovations in news and journalism continue.  In trying to stay on the leading edge CNN has announced a redesign of the site in support of their goal to become "a social network for news." (Whatever that means)

Source: "CNN Readies 'Social Network for News", Beet.TV

Collaborative Journalism Projects

I'm spending the next couple of days at a symposium here at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on the various collaborative Innocence/Wrongful Conviction Projects that combine the efforts of students, faculty, and staff at Law Schools and Journalism Schools.  There are several around the country, and we're working on starting a similar collaborative effort here (the Law School here has one, and approached the School of Journalism about working together to expand their efforts).
Other than bragging, the purpose of this post is to talk about such projects as examples of what's called collaborative journalism - where reporters collaborate with other reporters or outside experts, who may be able to bring particular expertise and/or resources to the investigation of stories, and/or citizen journalism, where investigations and stories are produced by "non-professionals".  There's a number of other good examples of collaborative journalism, although traditionally the collaboration was limited to a small group of reporters from different beats working together on a story, or a reporter relying on some outside expert to help understand what information an investigation revealed.  Collaboration was primarily limited and short-term, and citizen journalism was largely discounted as being non-professional, and thus of no value.
Today, the rise of the Internet, with its ability to facilitate communication, and services that make true collaboration easier (for example, Wikis), is making it easier to develop larger and more permanent collaborative efforts.  At the same time, academia has been increasingly emphasizing collaborative efforts, and recognizing that different fields can bring different expertise and skill sets to investigations.  Particularly when the subject is inherently interdisciplinary, as is the case with the idea of looking into potentially wrongful convictions.  The Web also has enabled citizen journalism, not only by facilitating access to sources and materials, but by providing a venue to report and share results.
Still, there's not been a high degree of collaborative journalism being done by "professional" journalists in traditional media - the few joint Law School/ Journalism School projects rely on students, overseen by faculty (some of whom are former professionals).  Yet these "citizen journalists" have often out-reported the local professionals, and had a larger impact on communities and individual's lives.   One would think that "professional journalism" - reporters and news organizations - would be better served to embrace collaborative and citizen journalism, if only that it's taking advantage of free labor, and to save themselves from the potential embarrassment of being scooped.  The kind of projects we're hearing about today at this symposium would seem to be a very good place to start.  These projects have an enviable track record and reputation, on issues of clear relevance and importance to the communities news organizations serve.  As news organizations continue shrinking their own investigative units, support of, and collaboration with, these projects would be a good investment.

Personalized News? Microsoft takes a shot

Mcrosoft's Future Social Experience Labs have been quietly collaborating with Cambridge University on the development of what's been labeled a "personalized news stream."  Developed as an app for smartphones running Windows, Project Emporia reuses data and news from social networks.  The app relies on two Windows technologies (auto categorization and matchbox) and gets all of its news information from shared URLs on Twitter.  The service is said to be similar to the way marketers determine personal ad relevance in the personalization of ad delivery.

However, the journalist in me has to wonder about relying on Twitter for news feeds - while Twitter can be a quick and easy source for breaking news, it also transmits a lot of unsourced, unchecked, and possibly malicious information -- and you have to wonder whether Project Emporia has a filter to sort the wheat from the chaff among more than 1 million Tweets a day (and if it does, how it works).  Will Project Emporia become a personalized news feed, or a personalized gossip feed?

While I'm at it, Microsoft has also been working on another project (Montage) which lets users create Web pages from stories or news from friends and others, and can be used in support of crowdsourced news.

These projects contribute to the diffusion of mechanisms supporting the personalization of news and information, which can also be readily adapted for citizen journalism and highly targeted micro-news services.  And the fact that allow of the collection, editing, page creation, and distribution can be accomplished from a smartphone or tablet, further embraces the ideals of citizen journalism and the idea of hyperlocal, hyperfocused,.and/or crowdsourced news. 

It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next few years, and how it will change our notions of news and journalism.

Source: "Personalized News: Microsoft Digs Deeper Into Social", Online Media Daily

New media for disaster news.

From Jordan Lawson -

Though the recent storm for me wasn't technically a disaster, I lost power around 8 p.m. and was able to keep track of the storm with my 3G accessible smartphone and by accessing Twitter and Facebook. I also could access weather and news websites, but I found myself mostly attracted to Twitter. It gave me quick updates about whtat was happening from friends and news sources about what was happening during the storm. These tweets gave me a better picture and I understood how devastating the storm was. If I just watched the news and didn't have personal accounts from other people, it might not have mattered as much, but I was interested and kept up to date by people's tweets. The storm wasn't as bad in my area and I wouldn't have had such an understanding of what happened. I didn't turn on a radio, I went to Twitter, and I think that is really telling of this age of social media. People didn't call in to a radio station to report what was going on (well I'm sure they did, but I didn't hear them) they tweeted and put #KnoxStorm to compile the tweets.

Creating "journalism" from social media (updated)

From Francesca Freed & Damion Huntoon -

Storify has launched an online tool that lets journalists (and PR and marketing firms) put together stories online by piecing together "tweets, YouTube clips, Flickr photos and other social media elements." 

"'We have so many real-time streams now, we’re all drowning,' founder Burt Herman told the NY Times. 'So the idea of Storify is to pick out the most important pieces, amplify them and give them context.'"

Storify, which has now just left beta-testing, helps communications people with the arduous task of breaking through all the "digital noise," the constant plague of social media.

Al-Jazeera has even used it for its live shows.

Source:  "Storify Launches Open Social Media Tool for Journalists," Social Times
              "The Story Behind Storify..." video explaining Storify


(Update: Added second recommendation from student, and video source- BJB)

Citizen Journalism Goes Royal

From Britney Goo:

Citizen journalism is becoming more and more prevalent, especially thanks to the ease of technologies such as the Internet, mobile devices, and Wifi.  Not only does it allow consumers to interact with the media, it now allows them to help produce content.  The greatest example of how widespread and popular citizen journalism has become is CNN’s iReport, which gives viewers the opportunity to participate in the news by sharing their stories online.

iReport has come a long way since it launched in April 2006.  Today, it has more than 750,000 users, and this number significantly surpasses those of its competitors.  This is proof that iReporting will continue to grow and change the face of journalism.  Citizens are becoming real journalists who are respected and valued by the industry, as opposed to in the past when they were simply consumers and audiences for advertisers to target.  CNN shares this sentiment, for they will soon be sending a citizen journalist across the globe to cover a high-profile story.

After winning a contest, Jason Sauter will be traveling to London to witness and report on the British Royal Wedding this week.  Sauter does not work in the news industry.  He said he gained some experience with broadcast news while in college, but today he works at Walt Disney World, where he is a guest service manager.  Sauter joined iReport in April and has uploaded seven iReports so far.

As Sauter covers the wedding this weekend, his content will appear together with CNN’s professional coverage on a newly launched interface called Open Story.  Open Story maps out selected stories about a particular event and places them on a timeline to form an accurate account.  It is living proof that citizen journalists are now collaborating with the professionals, and will continue to do so in the future. 

Source: "Royal Wedding ticket the latest benchmark of citizen journalism's ascendancy at CNN" Poynter. 

To view Sauter’s video submission, visit: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-586976

Stray Thought (from BJB): I wonder if CNN thought the 400 folks they sent to cover the wedding weren't enough?