The rise of the wearable device

Apple's year-old iPod Nano is being worn as a watch. There are at least a half-dozen companies making watch straps specifically for it. The Nano is a touch-screen iPod, a radio, a Nike running monitor, a photo frame and, of course, a watch -- with 18 different fashion faces. Apple's already considering the next step.

The Up Band, a thin, colorful bracelet from Jambox, captures biometrics about your exercise and sleep patterns and, when you plug it into your computer, sends that data to the Internet so you can see and share your health data. The Fitbit, a pedometer updated for online, does the same sort of tracking, but attaches to your belt, not your wrist.

But these are just the early vanguard of wearable computers that will be much more powerful and versatile. That shift will be fueled by four major trends: improved short-range communication protocols, flexible screens, and better battery life and voice recognition.

Protocols first. A new Bluetooth standard, Bluetooth 4.0, is now being built into smartphones and upcoming wearables. Standard Bluetooth 2.0 is a wireless communications protocol that allows smartphones to "talk" to earpieces.
 
But Bluetooth 4.0 uses less power and allows devices to "pair" with each other almost instantly. That means that a smartphone in your pocket can share information with a watch or bracelet on your wrist. That information could be the text of an incoming SMS, email or alert. Or, it could just be a signal that makes the bracelet flash blue if you have a new message, green if you've received a new email, or red if you've gotten an important alert.
 
Or, you could sport earrings that subtly buzz on your earlobes to signal arriving missives.
 
Of course, it could also have more serious uses, conveying health-monitoring data from patients to their smartphones and on to their doctors via the web, for example.
 
The devices could also support Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol so that your watch or bracelet could act as a transit token or a movie ticket by touching it to a point-of-purchase pad, much the way the Presto card in Canada works now.
 
A smart bracelet is possible due to advances made in flexible screens -- often OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) -- printed on a plastic backing. Such screens can arc along a circular bracelet. These screens display text, images and have a refresh rate high enough to show video. Cheaper e-ink screens (like those in Kindles and Kobo eReaders) have already been made of flexible backing and are being used to display color and monochrome data and images. It's easy to imagine an inexpensive bracelet that can, chameleon-like, alter its appearance based on sensors that detect a change in ambient temperature, surrounding colors or the vital signs of its wearer. Samsung is already working on flexible screens that will show up in wearable devices this year.
 
Of course, none of these wearables would work without power. Some, like watches or bracelets, could be powered by solar cells built as a layer of the display screen. Or, since the charging capacity of lithium-ion cells is improving dramatically and the Bluetooth 4.0 standard sips power, they could be powered by small, thin rechargeable cells.

Intelligent ears

Finally, these upcoming wearable computers can have intelligent ears. Siri, the speech-recognition technology now in iPhones, could power speech-recognizing earrings or watches. The wearable device, of course, would not do the speech-recognition work itself. It would just pass the captured speech to your smartphone via Bluetooth 4, then the phone would compress that audio data, send it to the Internet for Siri servers to decode, and then translate the text and send it as an SMS or email, sending a confirming alert back to your watch.
 
Why does this matter to us? Because these gadgets will become the next wave of communication devices, as different from tablets as tablets are from desktop computers. As journalists, we need to understand what's coming and ask important questions like -- how do you tell a story to a wristwatch?

Wayne MacPhail is a veteran journalist who now heads up w8nc inc., helping non-profit organizations, colleges and universities, charitable organizations and associations develop and implement technology-based, marketing driven communications strategies. MacPhail also teaches online journalism at the University of Western Ontario and Ryerson University. He serves on the board of rabble.ca where he founded the rabble podcast network and rabbletv. He's a tech columnist for the website.

This article was originally published on J-Source. J-Source and MediaShift have a content-sharing arrangement.

1. 3D

Ahmad Ouri, CMO, Technicolor: "2010 will be a defining year for 3D in theaters, in the living room, and even on mobile. For nearly a century, Technicolor has innovated entertainment for the big screen and the small screen, and we've seen the 'big' get bigger, and the 'small' screens get smaller, with the advancements in mobile devices. In 2010, we'll see 3D film and other content infiltrate all of these visual display mediums, and 3D will no longer be confined to the multiplex."

2. Alternative Content

John Rubey, president, AEG Network Live: "Alternative content (e.g. concerts and sports in movie theaters) continues to grow in importance as traditional audiences shrink and fragment, while the alternative content grows and shows better, more predictable results."

3. Digital Production

Steve Canepa, general manager, IBM Global Media and Entertainment Industry: "2010 will be the year that Hollywood productions begin to go digital end-to-end. Starting with capturing films on location with digital cameras and scanning analog prints into digital form, the footage will move across studio lots as digital data files. This will help to streamline workflows, to shorten production cycles, to support day-in-date release windows (theatrical, DVD and potentially video-on-demand for some markets) and to provide a readily accessible archive of all the film source content."

4. Digital Living Room

Mike Saxon, senior vice president, research, Harris Interactive: "We have seen steady growth in consumer uptake of legal digital distribution outlets, including iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu. We expect this trend to continue in 2010, as Internet-connected TVs shift these services from the office to the living room."

5. DVD Rentals + On-Demand Online

Steve Swasey, VP, corporate communications, Netflix: "In 2010, the trend toward movie enjoyment via the Internet will continue to grow, but not only as you might guess. Yes, more people will instantly watch movies and TV episodes from Netflix via the Internet on the TV or their computer in 2010 -- this area grew by 100 percent in the last year. But more people also will continue to rent DVDs online in 2010 compared to 2009. Netflix will increase its U.S. postage bill to $600 million in 2010, and to $700 million in 2011, to keep pace with the increased DVD rental demand. Whether it's streaming instantly or sending DVD and blu-ray discs via the U.S. mail, Netflix will continue to increase its delivery to people who want to watch great movies."

6. Mobile Video

Frank Chindamo, president and chief creative officer, Fun Little Movies: "In 2010, everyone with a mobile phone will realize they're also holding a really cool video player, and start watching what they want to watch, when and where they want to watch it -- instead of having crappy over-hyped TV shows shoved in their faces."

7. Online Distribution

Rick Allen, CEO, SnagFilms: "Online distribution will play an increasingly important role for all films, particularly documentaries, as audiences demand convenience and accessibility, and filmmakers seek to overcome the diminished opportunities on traditional platforms. Documentarians will bring in partners such as charities and advocates to help expand awareness, as well as audience."

8. Release Window

Blair Westlake, corporate vice president, media and entertainment group, Microsoft: "As studios look for more revenue streams, a premium-priced home viewing window for movies will be commonly sandwiched between the theatrical release and the DVD release."

9. Theatrical Exhibition

Andy DiOrio, corporate communications manager, AMC Entertainment: "Our crystal ball says that we will continue to see digital deployment expand in the industry, and at least one film is sure to pleasantly surprise us and exceed our expectations at the box office."

10. Video On Demand

Jamie McCabe, executive vice president, worldwide PPV/VOD and EST (electronic sell-through), 20th Century Fox: "We will see continued growth in VOD across cable, telco and Internet delivered platforms with a significant expansion of available content and increased access to multiple screens."

Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and web companies on digital strategy, distribution and engagement. He blogs at The Social 7 and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.

Now, with 2009 ending, we have a new year of media to ponder. I contacted a selection of media people and asked them to name their biggest media wish for 2010.

New Year's Wishes from Media Folks

David Carr, Media Equation columnist, New York Times: "I'd like old/new media to put away the squirt guns and start exploring the venn diagram where interests intersect and collaboration can take place. A more sustainable model of news production is evolving as we speak: the whining and blaming is just delaying a practical discussion about how we all move forward."

Josh Cohen, senior business product manager, Google News: You know that feeling in your stomach on New Year's Day? Part trepidation, part excitement, part hangover? Right now, the news industry seems struck with a mix of fear over what changes might yet come and excitement over the many paths available to it. The Internet is offering more and more opportunities for getting great journalism in front of eager consumers. A ton of ideas are swirling around -- exciting ways to distribute news, tap into citizen reporting and generate revenue. No one quite knows which ones are going to work. It's both terrifying and thrilling.

So my wish for 2010 is that the parties that have an interest in this -- news organizations, technology companies and others -- just dive in and start trying everything. Whether they do it on their own or through partnerships with Google or our competitors, news publishers need to keep innovating. Let's spend less time discussing, more time launching and iterating. I know we're a bunch of optimists at Google, but I'm really hopeful that 2010 is the year that journalism really hits its stride on the Internet."

David Cohn, founder of Spot.us: "My wish for 2010 is that it be a year of doing. I hope the larger media industry continues the ongoing conversation about the state of journalism, but not unless it means taking action. Next year should be the year we stop writing/reading the white papers and start being the change we wish to see."

Megan Garber, staff writer, Columbia Journalism Review: "Assuming we can't wish for 1,000 more wishes -- and/or for some billionaire oil baron to take a sudden interest in funding journalism -- I'd hope, broadly, for more collaboration. Among individual journalists, among news organizations, among individual journalists and news organizations. One silver lining in all our current gloom is that the media industry now has the opportunity to reinvent itself -- to imagine what journalism might be when freed from the constraints of historical accident. As we take advantage of that opportunity, I hope we'll be willing -- and eager -- to overcome outdated notions of reflexive competition, and to embrace instead a much more contemporary sensibility: 'We're all in this together.' "

Seth Godin, author, blogger, speaker and marketing expert: "A wish? That media companies would stop whining and start building. This is the chance of a lifetime."

Tara Hunt, blogger, speaker and author of "The Whuffie Factor": "My media-related wish is that all the websites out there that we use daily would start to work together more effectively, alleviating me from the pain of having to update my address in a gabillion different places. I moved to Montreal this summer and have been finding places all over the web that require updating."

Craig Kanalley, founder of Breaking Tweets and now with the Huffington Post: "My media wish for 2010 is for news companies of all kinds to put aside differences of the past, egotism and self interests to work together. News organizations in 2010 should link to each other (yes, the competition), collaborate with each other, and get aggressive in implementing new media strategies and models that fit this web-first media world. It's time to put an end to archaic practices of the past and to think about how to do good journalism with the tools available to journalists today."

Hamilton Nolan, contributing editor, Gawker: "Jobs! I would wish for media jobs. Jobs for young people just coming up, jobs for everyone who got laid off, jobs for people who'd like to move up in the industry, dream jobs for people to aim for. Paying media jobs that people can live on and realistically hope to get. Although I'm not optimistic!"

Jolie O'Dell, community manager and writer, ReadWriteWeb: "My wish is twofold: First, I'd like for everyone to stop bemoaning the 'death of newspapers,' 'the demise of old media,' and 'the murder of journalism (subtext: by bloggers).'

"And second, I'd like to see web applications and social media integrated into every journalism class in America. J-school kids ought to be taught SEO principles, such as metadata and tagging. They should be taught what constitutes a good Digg headline and how to get retweets. They should know about page views, clickthroughs, and conversion rates.

"Because these are all the things I wish I knew when I graduated and found myself working at a digital publication. It happened to me, and I'd wager it's going to happen to around 75 percent of the graduating class of 2010, as well. If those graduates are as unprepared for the Internet as I was, then we can really start to weep and wail for the passing of journalism."

Jack Shafer, Press Box columnist, Slate: "I have no wishes, no desires, no passion. I am a lukewarm mud-puddle. Sorry."

Rachel Sklar, editor at large, Mediaite: "My 2010 wish is for quality. I have no problem with page-view bait -- Megan Fox, anyone? -- but I do worry about gunning for traffic at the expense of quality. The good stuff takes time. It always has and it always will, but the payoff is so much more important than just another 'Twilight' slideshow. I love 'Twilight' slideshows (Team Edward!) -- that stuff is fun, and I never want to lose the fun stuff. But the flip side of the mini-wheat has to be there, too.

"That's not only the reason they give out Pulitzers, but also the reason corruption is uncovered and injustices exposed and hypocrisies revealed, and that's important. More and more, looking around the media space, I worry about losing that -- about the bosses losing that as the highest goal, and the newbies losing that as a goal in the first place. So my wish in 2010 is for quality time spent on quality content that matters, and makes a difference. Heck, it might even get page views."

Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author, and an associate editor at MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is the founder and editor of Regret The Error, the author of Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, and a weekly columnist for Columbia Journalism Review. Follow him on Twitter at @CraigSilverman.

Every time I sit down to write an in-depth story for MediaShift, I start getting that same sinking feeling: I'm missing something. Did someone else already write this story? Did I talk to all the right people? Did those people tell me everything I should know? Are my assumptions and story angle sound? Did I get all sides of the story?

I'd like to explore new ways of doing story generation, reporting and follow-up, using the tools of online collaboration and going beyond traditional shoe-leather reporting. I don't want to throw out the old style but build on it, taking the best of the new and the old to create something more open and more collaborative. In that spirit, I am outlining three basic flows: old-school reporting workflow (pre-Internet); current reporting; and a new-school method that imagines more people engaged online.

The Way It Was

1. Assignment editor or reporter comes up with an idea. The idea might come from someone calling the newsroom or sending a letter, or from a press release, or from other media stories that could use another angle. The story might also come out of the reporter's own everyday life experience.

2. The idea is brought up at an editorial meeting, discussed by editors and reporters, and given the green light to go forward.

3. The reporter does basic research for the story by checking the newspaper morgue, viewing old TV footage, or finding archival radio reports. The reporter would also contact regular sources to find out what they know. If the story relates to a place, the reporter could visit that place and get a feel for it.

4. The reporter interviews people involved in the story, experts, analysts and other observers or participants to gather as much information as possible.

5. The reporter checks in along the way with an editor to make sure the story is on the right track and nothing is missing.

6. The reporter collects all material, including research, transcribed interviews and editor feedback, and takes out the best and most relevant quotes for the story.

7. The reporter writes the story using that material, and turns it into the editor, going back and making changes until a finished story can be run. The story goes into print, onto TV or radio.

8. Readers or story participants respond by calling the newsroom or writing letters, causing corrections or follow-ups for the story.

The Way It Is

1. Assignment editor or reporter comes up with an idea. The idea might come from someone calling the newsroom or emailing, or from a press release, or from other media stories or blog posts that could use another angle or more depth. The idea might also come from online forums or comments on other news stories, or it could come from a reporter's everyday experience, or from his/her own experience blogging on that subject.

2. The idea is brought up at an editorial meeting, discussed by editors and reporters, and given the green light to go forward.

3. The reporter does basic research for the story by going online and using search engines and seeing what else has been written on the subject in other media outlets and specialized blogs. The reporter also contacts regular sources to find out what they know. If the story relates to a place, the reporter might visit that place and get a feel for it.

4. The reporter interviews people involved in the story, experts, analysts and other observers or participants to gather as much information as possible. That might include emails, phone calls or in-person interviews.

5. The reporter checks in along the way with an editor to make sure the story is on the right track and nothing is missing.

6. The reporter collects all material, including research, transcribed interviews, links to related blog posts, and editor feedback, and takes out the best and most relevant quotes for the story. Sometimes, the reporter also prepares unedited transcripts, audio and video to post online as additional material for the story.

7. The reporter writes the story using that material, and turns it into the editor, going back and making changes until a finished story can be run. The story goes online, into print, onto TV or radio.

8. Readers or story participants respond by emailing or calling the newsroom, by leaving comments beneath the story online or writing thoughts on their own blogs, causing corrections or follow-ups for the story.

The Way It Will Be

1. Ideas come from a community or social network set up specifically for that reporter's beat. This community includes important sources, experts and various people with specialized knowledge of the subject. (See Beatblogging for an early experiment in this.) The reporter might run weekly "Idea Log" posts on his/her blog, listing story ideas and asking for feedback from interested readers. Reporters might also poll interested readers to have them vote up or down possible story ideas, or have them contribute payments or "reader miles" (earned by participation) for stories they would like to see.

Alternatively, an assignment editor or reporter comes up with an idea. The idea might come from someone calling the newsroom or emailing, or from a press release, or from other media stories or blog posts that could use another angle or more depth. The idea might also come from online forums or comments on other news stories, or it could come from a reporter's everyday experience.

2. The idea is vetted by the reporter's social network, who help decide whether it is worthy of more research. On the reporter's blog, the idea might be fleshed out with more feedback from interested readers. The idea is brought up at an editorial meeting, discussed by editors and reporters, and given the green light to go forward. That green light would also take into account early interest from the reporter's blog readers and social network.

3. The reporter does basic research for the story by going online and using search engines and seeing what else has been written on the subject in other media outlets and specialized blogs. The reporter sets up a wiki, where interested readers and sources can help shape the story as it goes along. The reporter also contacts regular sources to find out what they know. If the story relates to a place, the reporter could visit that place and get a feel for it.

4. The reporter interviews people involved in the story, experts, analysts and other observers or participants to gather as much information as possible. The sources would include suggestions made by the social network or from earlier blog posts on the subject. The interviews might take place via emails, phone calls or in-person.

5. The reporter checks in along the way with an editor to make sure the story is on the right track and nothing is missing. The reporter also updates his/her blog as well as the social network to make sure the story isn't missing anything.

6. The reporter collects all material, including research, transcribed interviews, links to related blog posts, and editor feedback, and takes out the best and most relevant quotes for the story. The reporter also prepares unedited transcripts, audio and video to post online as additional material for the story. Possibly, the reporter can give this unedited material to the sources to check and post on their own websites or blogs, with the proviso that they will link to the final story.

7. The reporter writes the story using that material, and turns it into the editor, going back and making changes until a finished story can be run. The story goes online, into print, onto TV or radio and into a wiki, where people can make changes with editorial oversight.

8. Readers or story participants respond by emailing or calling the newsroom, by leaving comments beneath the story online, causing corrections or follow-ups for the story. The story wiki is open to editing -- with oversight -- forever, allowing updates, corrections, links to outside sources and more.

I'd like to invite you to add to these points, sharing your own experiences for "The Way It Is" and also sharing your hopes and ideas for "The Way It Will Be." Please include them in the comments below and I'll update the lists above.

Photo of press box at Fenway Park during 2007 World Series by misconmike via Flickr.

And now there are a series of discussions taking place called Journalism That Matters, where various deep thinkers are trying to literally invent "the next newsroom" prototype. Here is the blurb describing what they're going to try to accomplish in Washington, DC, in early August:

Our goal is to facilitate critical discussion on the future and sustainability of journalism. Our unique approach is to first assemble editors, publishers, writers, researchers, academics, entrepreneurs, public advocates, independent and citizen journalists for fast, focused discussion. We'll then define the ownership, management, location and sustainability of a 'next newsroom' prototype in at least one U.S. community, to launch in early- to mid-2008.

We're going to answer this call: Pick an ideal location, and start a news organization from scratch, using the best-available technology and ideas, and without the obligations or burdens of legacy processes or infrastructure. Where will it be, what will it look like, who will own it, and how will it run.

As much as I would like to be at the conference, I have other plans at the time and won't be attending. However, I wondered if perhaps MediaShift readers could help me build one possible scenario for this "next newsroom" prototype. I'll ask a series of questions for you to fill in. You can answer via the comments below or use the Feedback Form. I'll then insert your comments into the blanks and then send along the final blog post by the conference's start on August 7 and 8 (if we get enough input). I will credit and link the folks who contribute. So without further ado...

The Next Newsroom Prototype

Geographical Location?

Physical Setting?
[cubicles in an open room; virtual offices...]

Staffing?
[professionals; amateurs; editors; producers...]

Business Model?
[advertising; donations; paid content...]

Areas of Coverage?
[hard news; investigations; features...]

Community Interaction?
[forums; town halls; citizen journalism; blogs...]

Distribution?
[RSS feeds; mobile; print; broadcast...]

Transparency and Bias?

Power Structure?
[top down; bottom up; combination...]

Technological Innovation?
[map mashups; micro-blogging....]

There's obviously a lot to discuss at this conference, and a lot for people to consider when trying to truly build a newsroom from scratch. We always tend to think about newsrooms in the same way as we are used to them, so it's hard to really start from scratch.

Anyway, I hope you'll leave some thoughts in the comments. Even if you just have one idea that fits under one of these headings (or if you have your own heading) I hope you'll share your ideas in the comments or on your own blog linking back to this post, and I'll update it over time.

Photo of CNN's DC newsroom by Lee Hughey.

Now I want to get down to more of the nitty-gritty of how a future newsroom might operate. Rather than confine the idea to a local print newspaper or local TV station, I want to imagine a local newsroom that has one overriding goal: "Serve the public by collaborating with them and delivering the news they want on the platform of their choice." If people want to read it on their cell phones, great. If they want to print it out or get a print edition, that will be possible. If they like video, there will be video. If they want podcasts, there will be podcasts. If they want to dig in and help out, they can.

How would such a newsroom work without the weight of a legacy media outlet, without the history of management and circulation and broadcast towers and every other piece of infrastructure that is ingrained in the institutional memory of so many old media operations? And perhaps most importantly for the media industry, how can such a nouveau operation make money? Let's look at this idea, what I'll call the "New Newsroom" or NNR, point-by-point.

Leaner Operation
There is a tendency for people to fault corporate news operations that lay off staff to boost profits. But rather than make a blanket statement on staff cuts, let's try to look at this issue as a subtraction and addition of staff. For every person let go who used to run newspaper presses, there would likely be another web developer added. For every person who drove a bulky TV newsvan around, there would be a search engine optimization expert added. In general, we might foresee these types of changes:

Subtractions: Legacy media production people; legacy media distribution people, including newspaper delivery people; circulation departments; middle management; reporters who focus on one platform.

Additions: Multi-platform multimedia reporters and producers comfortable working in text, stills, audio or video; online community managers; web development experts; mobile development experts; programmer-reporters or mash-up specialists.

I would envision a full-time staff that is much smaller than the average metro local newspaper and a somewhat smaller operation than a local network TV affiliate. However, the range of freelancers would extend from volunteer community involvement in online comments and news tips to paid expert bloggers on niche subjects.

Ways to Make Money
There are the usual ways that media outlets make money online and in various platforms. Advertisements online and/or in a print adjunct publication or in an audio podcast or in a video report. Sponsorships for niche subject blogs. Charging money for print publications, or for specialized online or mobile content.

But perhaps the most intriguing ideas for making money have yet to be explored by such a local newsroom: those cutting edge user-generated ads or special online forums set up for advertisers to get real feedback from their customers. Imagine a car dealership that created its own webpage on the newsroom's site. The site might contain the latest offers from the dealer, but might also contain a blog written by the dealer herself, along with feedback from people who have interacted with the dealer in the past. The more open to criticism such a business would be, and the more it could roll with the punches, the more popular such a page might become.

How Management Works
Management of such a New Newsroom would be challenging. The usual top-down hierarchy of most newsrooms would be adjusted to allow more voices into the decision-making process. That means the entry-level reporter would be able to have more dialogues with a publisher or an editor in chief, and that community experts would be included in any major decision made by NNR -- from choosing subjects for special reports to choosing platforms for content delivery. Rather than turn the process into anarchy, or having too many chefs in the kitchen, management would have to balance openness with a need to get things done in a timely fashion.

Collaboration with the Community
When would the community become part of the newsgathering and reporting and follow-up process? In every feasible part. NNR's website could include a Digg-like page where community members can vote up the stories they'd like to see covered by the newsroom. Community experts could be part of the daily editorial meeting. Reporters could collaborate with their expert sources in the community, not only getting quotes from them but also asking them to help in the reporting process.

Platform Independence
NNR would strive to report the stories in ways that fit the subject matter and in formats the audience desires. If a story similar to the recent freeway collapse in Oakland deserves to get multimedia coverage, then NNR might dispatch a reporting crew to the scene with a still camera, videocamera and audio recorder. While the homegrown staff was working on gathering information, another editor would be combing the area for citizen eyewitnesses who might also provide video, still photos or their own first-hand accounts on a special blog.

Not every story would get the multimedia treatment. That determination might be made by editorial staff at the start of the story idea, or it could be made on the fly depending on what media comes in from the community. The important overriding credo is that NNR will deliver the news in whatever way the community craves and is economically feasible, including online video, audio, print, online, mobile, TV or radio. Each locality will decide what's necessary to meet their needs.

The Shape of Stories
After initial completion, each story could take the shape of a tightly controlled wiki. Each edit to the story wiki would go through either a trusted freelance community editor or a paid editor from NNR. Stories would live online in an initially reported form, as well as in the editable wiki form that could be updated over time as things change. These living archives would have the potential to engage more members of the community, but could also add a heavy workload to staffers. The editable wikis could be shut in case they are overloaded with edits by vandals or political idealogues. The rules for shutting wikis or comments would be consistent throughout the website.

Thinking Outside the Box
One of the ways NNR can break from the past is to hire or talk to people who aren't simply trained to be journalists or ad salespeople or marketers. Why not bring in a professional athlete to blog about sports, or a contractor to do a podcast about the housing market, or a registered nurse to run a discussion forum about health care issues? Giving local experts a way to go beyond sound bites and pull-quotes would have a strong impact on the community.

What do you think? How do you imagine a future local newsroom might operate without the constraints of legacy media? Can this business model work? How do you see things playing out in 5, 10 or 15 years in local media? Share your thoughst in the comments below.

Photo of CNN's DC newsroom by Lee Hughey.

UPDATE: There's been some great discussion in the blogosphere reacting to this blog post. As usual, I don't consider my views into the future as the be-all, end-all, but rather the start of a larger conversation. One of the more interesting responses came from Jeff Crigler, the CEO of online news syndicator Voxant and blogger at the News2020 Project. He was pondering the future of newspaper distribution as he watched a local boy throwing papers onto people's lawns:

Today's news is more fluid. We catch it at the Department of Motor Vehicles on a news ticker, we hear it on the radio in our cars, we see it on a TV in the hotel lobby, or we get it via email or a portal. While distribution has been diffused throughout culture, the channels of distribution are still owned by corporations. With the newsroom of 2020, distribution, like content creation, will be shifted -- at least in part -- to the citizenry as the role of editor and paperboy are mashed up into a hybrid hierarchy-less job description. These distributors of the news will select the news that is of most interest to their readers -- be it 10 or 10 million of them -- creating customized news lenses.

Although you may not see the paperboy of 2020 trailing his dad's minivan, tossing newspapers onto porches, you can bet I'll still be bumping into him on my early morning bike rides.

Already, newspapers big and small have talked the talk of a new way of doing journalism and reaching these audiences, and some have even walked the walk. The Greensboro News & Record has been a blogging pioneer, the Spokane Spokesman-Review has made transparency a priority, and the Wisconsin State Journal has let the audience vote on front page stories. And the Bakersfield Californian and Rocky Mountain news have had success with hyperlocal citizen media sites.

So perhaps together we can come up with a list of ways in which newspapers can enter this new age while retaining their goodness, and remain relevant whether they are delivered online or via new devices or on dead trees. I'll kick off the list with a few items, and have repurposed an item from a recent Jeff Jarvis blog post on BuzzMachine on this subject.

Imagining a Future for Newspapers

The way it is: Editors assign stories to reporters.
The way it will be: The community helps with story generation through special online forums, blogs and other interactive mechanisms.

The way is: Editors choose which letters to print in the Letters to the Editor section.
The way it will be: An online forum allows all letters to be posted in full.

The way it is: A story runs in the newspaper and is posted online on the newspaper website. Perhaps another day, the reporter files a follow-up story.
The way it will be: The story runs in the newspaper and is posted online, and then is constantly updated by editors, the reporter and the readers in the community.

The way it is: Newspapers are printed and delivered to homes and businesses.
The way it will be: Newspaper content is beamed to special reader devices that are lightweight, flexible and use low power.

The way it is: Breaking news happens in a community, and a reporter is sent to the scene.
The way it will be: Breaking news happens, and the editors and reporter scour the neighborhood for people on-the-scene who might have taken photos, videos or can write up a citizen reports on what happened.

The way it is: We consider paid reporters and editors to be professional journalists and everyone else is an amateur with questionable skills.
The way it will be: We consider everyone to be potential journalists, and there are shades of gray between who is a pro and who is an amateur.

The way it is: Newspapers try to cover all the news themselves.
The way it will be: "Cover what you do best. Link to the rest." -- Jeff Jarvis

More from Jeff Jarvis:

The way it is: Newspapers are all things to all people.
The way it will be: Newspapers do what they do best, which is usually local.

The way it is: Newspapers have deadlines and editions.
The way it will be: Newspapers are never done. (See NPR's effort to start the show that's never over.)

The way it is: Newsrooms are temples (with reporters and editors as a priesthood holding onto what they think are unique skills).
The way it will be: Newsrooms are classrooms (where it is in their interest to improve the journalism done in their larger networks).

The way it is: Newsrooms.
The way it will be: Cars.

From Barbara Iverson:

The way it is: Reporters are discouraged from or sanctioned for "self-plagiarism" -- using the same source to produce different takes on a story.
The way it will be: Reporters will write about issues and ideas across several media, linking to the related stories they write, often with input from readers.

From Ujjwal Acharya:

The way it is: Newspapers can have a website.
The way it will be: The news site can have a newspaper.

From Gil Zino:

The way it is: Papers compile a slim sliver of the overall content, and send duplicate copies of the sliver down a one-way street to each unique individual that reads the paper.
The way it will be: Communities build content, and people interact with the content that matters to them.

From Karl Martino:

The way it is:: Newspapers judge readership size/demographics via subscription numbers and use these numbers to make themselves attractive to classified advertisers.
The way it will be: A combination of metrics that combine traffic with online relationships/connectivity statistics will become the new way news sites make themselves attractive to advertisers.

The way it is: Newspapers finance the cost of in-depth journalism via the selling of classifieds.
The way it will be: I have no idea.
I think newspapers will need to find a new business model online that works and is sustainable. They will likely have to shrink their full-time staffs and depend more on freelancers and the audience to help them with investigative reports.

I invite you to add your own items in the comments below, and try to keep it in the realm of newspapers. We've done similar exercises in the past covering the shifting philosophy of all media -- the Oldthink vs. Newthink list. I hope we can revisit this topic for TV, radio, music and movies in future posts, and make this more of a utilitarian list. I'll also invite a few people who've been around newspapers for some time to submit their ideas, and will update the list with their input and yours -- with credit.

UPDATE: There's been a nice response to my post so far, with Jeff Jarvis calling it a memegame. Jarvis points to some examples to back up my entries above, including Wired magazine's efforts at transparency and The Economist running all its letters to the editor online. Jarvis doesn't subscribe to a future with e-paper or e-ink, but thinks cell phones might play a role. "We need innovation," he says. "Who cares about the gadget. Get me the news." Jarvis adds some nice entries to the list as well, which I've included above.

The anonymous author of the Fading to Black blog ("A look at the downward spiral of the newspaper industry...") doesn't believe that the audience will realistically help with editing tasks. Here's part of this blogger's rebuttal to my future where the audience helps with newsgathering:

Overall, people are too lazy for this to become true. Nothing against the average citizen -- we all want to read the story, we all want it laid out for us, not work for it. If we get upset, we may write a letter to the editor. If we see something missing or wrong in a story, we might call up or email to point it out. But do not think for a second more than a hundredth of a percent of the public is interested in getting involved with the news more than talking to a reporter or perhaps sending in a photo or video. Pretty much the same as it is done today.

Yes, there should be changes. Some have re-thought things already and implemented changes, and the rest no doubt will eventually (or at least see the light on their deathbeds). Certainly, keep readers involved in a greater capacity than before. But the idea of the general public taking an active role in the news they read is akin to thinking everybody with a shovel will chip in with road repairs in front of their home.

I think this is overstating the case. Sure, not everyone will help you edit your stories or generate ideas, but if even if a small percentage does, it will increase the value of what you do as a news organization -- and help create a community newsgathering operation.

UPDATE 2: I guess this really is turning into a memegame, as Jarvis surmised. The newspaper change meme has been turned into an education change meme by edu-blogger Miguel Guhlin, who repurposed my own list and turned them into "The Way It Is" and "The Way It Will Be" for educators and students in a new age. Plus, he took the next logical step of putting his list into a wiki for anyone to edit or add particular examples.

Guhlin's list has even spawned a counter-argument from Stephen Downes, who calls Guhlin's first list "nothing more than slogans carelessly applied." Downes makes some good points that even apply to what we're doing here about newspapers. Here's the gist of his complaints:

The future is much more difficult to grasp than a mere set of slogans. Fundamental values are shifting under our feet. Pretending it's something superficial, as represented by this list, won't change that. It is important to have an accurate representation of the issues, so people can genuinely understand what they are facing.

My hope is that these slogans about newspapering will be put into practice so that we'll have plenty of examples of success into the future. And if the future brings something radically different, so be it.

Photo of newspaper boxes by iirraa.

After reading through countless articles summing up changes in media for 2006, I can say the year was a massive breakthrough for online video -- and YouTube in particular -- as well as for citizen journalism and user-generated content. But I already knew that, and so did you.

And most people take the easy way out when it comes to predictions. They simply re-predict what analysts were saying the year before: Microsoft will buy Yahoo, or eBay will buy Yahoo, or Google will buy anything that breathes. So I decided this year to really put YOU in charge of the Predict-O-Rama for 2007, and asked for your most audacious predictions. Here's a sampling of some of your more interesting ideas:

> "The notion of a mass market is finally laid to rest, as marketers uncover effective ways to reach clusters of individual consumers that have similar lifestyles, interests and behaviors. At least one big multinational ad agency will fail to evolve, by embracing this transformation. As a result, they will be disregarded as fossils from a bygone era." -- David H. Deans, of GeoActive Group, who explains this more at AlwaysOn

> "The Internet will become a more increasingly multimedia forum. Artists will increasingly turn to the Internet, and blog sites in particular, to showcase their talents. The blogosphere will become the new L.A., the new Nashville, and the new New York where artists will break into the music scene in an independent manner that will eventually render big record companies virtually obsolete." -- Dr. BLT

> "Google will finally deliver a browser and an online video [will] play automatically in it. Of course, there will be a lot of other goodies." -- Ken Leebow

> "Hillary or Barack or John McCain will get one of their 'VOTE FOR ME' bumper stickers visible in '24' or some other highly rated TV show. Who knows how far the relationship between Hollywood and politicians will go? We'll see." -- Frank Baker

> "Either the New York Times or the Washington Post will look at the 'day pass' route where a sponsor provides access to content behind the paid barrier (like the Economist and Salon do now). One of the Web 2.0 bloggers will try to charge for content and fail. A major Web 2.0 micromedia/blogger will go under (probably not the same one as tried to charge for content, but you never know)." -- Ged Carroll

My favorite prediction also comes from Ged Carroll because it's the least audacious: "Web 2.0 will just be the web." (It's actually a summation of John Battelle's prediction below.)

For some reason, this "Your Take" blog entry on MediaShift has been inundated over the past few days by spammers who run comments with repeated links to "WebCam Girls," "WebCam Sex," and "WebCam Strip." I will accept that as a prediction that webcam sex will thrive in 2007. How can I argue with that contention when sites such as Stickam are getting media attention in the New York Times just two days into the new year?

As for the other swamis out there beyond the MediaShift realm, here are some of their more entertaining predictions:

> "1) Call me overly logical, but if lonelygirl15 was such a huge step above the completely unknown lonelygirl14, I predict lonelygirl16 will star in 'Mission Impossible 4.' 2) Nothing in 2007 will be as big in the world of entertainment as Lindsay Lohan's funeral. Not only for the speeches by Paris, Britney and Meryl, but for the chance to reminisce about the grandest celebrity era in history." -- Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times columnist in a prediction roundup

> "Apple Computer Inc. unveils an iPod cellphone that is anything but the bride of 'FrankenPhone,' the name given its first attempt to put the iTunes music service on Motorola's clunky Rokr phone." -- Los Angeles Times staffer roundup (note how nobody puts their name on this roundup)

> "Despite Google's leading market share, Yahoo!'s Panama launch [of its advertising service], and Microsoft's substantial search-related investments, Ask.com, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, is the search engine to watch in 2007. We foresee market share gains, news regarding innovations like Ask X, and progress in paid listings." -- Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor's, writing for BusinessWeek

> "Content has evolved online, we won't see new portals per se, but we will see vertical portals, or countless niche sites, some of which produce niche, contextual content along verticals and others who do not create any content but simply aggregate it. As a direct result of intermediation and personalization, a lot of people will drop Digging (I'm using the term here for what Digg represents: the good, bad and ugly of Web 2.0 and not only contributors to Digg) and the like and start doing similar things for themselves." -- HipMojo's Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, writing at Seeking Alpha

> "A major media outlet will predict that the Web 2.0 bubble has burst or deflated seriously. The prediction will be wrong. I've been seeing more and more respected voices out there claiming we're in a bubble of some sort or another when it comes to Web 2.0. I predicted that the meme will have played out in 2006, and I think I was right, but the underlying foundational strength of what created that meme is far too strong to be a bubble or played out." -- John Battelle, writing on SearchBlog

Want to add something to the mix? It's never too late to gaze into your crystal ball and share what you see in the comments below.

[Crystal ball photo by Kevin Trotman, with some touch-up in Photoshop by me.]

"We are thrilled to finally have control over the online video experience," said the immortal News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, whose body passed away last year, but whose brain still functions so he can direct the media company. "After spending years in litigation with video-sharing sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe, the media companies can now showcase their own work while allowing the average citizen to upload any video that we approve of."

OurTube's innovative approach includes a special "Upload Triplicate Form" for any person who'd like to share their video with friends and family. If the person's video includes copyrighted music or video clips, the user only has to pay the OurTube licensing fee of $199, fill out the patented triple-CC'ed form online that sends alerts to teams of lawyers representing each license holder so they can set up court appearances to settle licensing disputes.

"We're better than YouTube, we have better content than YouTube, and we'll pay anyone who uploads their network-approved videos to OurTube instead of YouTube a bounty of $2.50 per video," said incoming NBC Universal president Jason Calacanis. "It won't take long for OurTube and its quality user-generated and network-approved content to outpace YouTube's October 2008 audience of 210 million unique visitors."

The four major television networks will each own 25% of OurTube, and expect to make money by inserting advertising into various non-intrusive spots, including the site's home page, sidebars and logo, as well as before, after and during video clip viewing -- not to mention product insertion within videos. OurTube users will also have the following premium options:

> $10.95 per month buys you unlimited access to the "Gunsmoke" audio clip library for use in your videos.

> $22.95 per month buys you a "Director" account, where OurTube will guarantee a response to any email question within 96 hours (though a personalized response is not guaranteed in every case). "Directors" will also have the privilege of only having to fill out licensing forms in duplicate rather than triplicate.

> $39.95 per month buys a "Platinum" account at OurTube, giving users the right to criticize network TV programming in their videos, as long as the video is not publicly accessible and can only be viewed by the user.

"The time has come for the media companies to take complete control of the chaotic and wild world of online video," said Rupert Murdoch's brain. "Rather than making you suffer through another teen bump-and-grind lip-synching video, OurTube will only show the best of the best content, videos produced by professionals who have years of experience exploiting the masses. Our teens will bump and grind harder and will lip-synch better."

*****

Yes, the above press release is a spoof of the idea being considered by News Corp., Viacom, CBS and NBC Universal to start their own video-sharing service to take on YouTube. The media companies, like the record companies before them, are flummoxed over how to deal with upstart video sites that allow people to upload videos with copyrighted content. While YouTube provides huge exposure for this content, helping to promote it, the companies are worried they are losing out on a huge opportunity to monetize their intellectual property.

The problem is that four huge media companies launching an Internet venture will move in slow motion, thus the late 2008 launch date in the spoof above. There are more questions than answers: Will they only feature their content? What other content will they allow, and will they screen it or filter it first? How will rights issues be solved? Will people trust them to be democratic in what gets featured on the site?

Bully to Motley Fool's Rick Munarriz for shooting down the embryonic "OurTube" idea clearly and concisely. He rightly points to the failure of music companies to launch their own downloading sites, MusicNet and Pressplay, because of restrictive rights-management schemes. Here's the meat of his argument:

The networks want to control their own destiny in cyberspace. There is nothing wrong with trying to cut out the middleman. The problem creeps in when you disregard the value-enhancing powers of the middleman. The networks feel as if they are the ones that made YouTube so popular. The stats tell a different story. Check out the most viewed videos of all time on YouTube, and you won't find the majors. The site's top draws have been clips of pets reacting, babies laughing, and folks dancing and lampooning what major media heads think we should consider entertaining...

Come to the table to talk revenue-sharing with YouTube? You bet. Take it on as an enemy, or disregard it as irrelevant without you? The truth may surprise you as to whose irrelevance you may ultimately unmask.

What do you think? Will a major-media YouTube rival have a chance online? How? Or do you think major media companies should work with YouTube to promote their content? Share your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE: Buzzmachine blogger Jeff Jarvis also thinks the idea of a YouTube-killer from Big Media is wrong-headed and doomed to failure:

They miss the point: You want to be where the viewers are; you can't any longer expect to force them to come to you. The viewers are on YouTube. Figure out how to exploit that -- as CBS is doing, putting its clips up there -- and you'll find a new means of promotion and distribution.

"Now that Reuters has a correspondent actually reporting on stories from Second Life regularly, is this now becoming a real world?" she wondered. "How can you tell the difference anymore?"

It's a good question. Second Life (SL) isn't really a game. It's a virtual world created by Linden Lab where you "walk" or even "fly" around a 3D graphical environment, interacting with avatars -- computer representations of actual people who are also in the world. It doesn't cost anything to join the action, but if you want land or posessions, you need to pay real money for them. And if you build up property or can create a cool line of clothes, you can make a business out of it that pays you real money converted from the game's "Linden dollars."

More and more real-life companies are spending time and money trying to figure out how to promote their products in Second Life. The virtual world recently logged its 1 millionth registered "resident," though that pales in comparison to the 6.5 million players of the most popular online game of all time, World of Warcraft. But media companies are clamoring to write about Second Life and its culture bleeding into the real world, while simultaneously setting up a virtual presence there to promote their writers or publications.

I have received a growing number of emails from random friends who have heard about Second Life but wonder "Who has time for all this?" Obviously, these media companies are making time for it:

> Wired Magazine recently ran a Travel Guide to SL in its magazine, and announced it was opening up virtual offices in the world where it would host events and lectures with writers and editors.

> CNET built an in-game replica of its own headquarters building in Second Life, and plans to conduct interviews there and host events as well.

> The Reuters wire service has gone the furthest by creating an in-game presence in Second Life on its own island, along with a special SL website on Reuters with charts on the Linden/U.S. dollar exchange rate and real dollars spent in SL each day (nearly $600,000 today). Plus, Reuters reporter Adam Pasick has been assigned to head Reuters' virtual bureau in Second Life under the avatar name of Adam Reuters. You just can't buy this kind of hipster quotient, or can you?

> BusinessWeek, rather than set up its own virtual building or bureau in Second Life, chose the easier route of just hyping the entry of media companies into the game, with little criticism or thoughtful reporting. In fact, the photo essay accompanying the story online might as well be a series of ads for the companies that have set up shop in SL.

Reality Check for SL

While I haven't checked out Second Life first-hand yet, I have played many of the percursors to it such as Ultima Online and AlphaWorld in the mid-'90s. The problem with marketing products in these virtual worlds is that everyone is spread out over large plots of virtual land and don't experience everything in the same way at the same time -- as they do watching a TV show or even visiting a website.

While the 1 million figure for residents of Second Life has been trumpeted in the media, keep in mind that this is the total number of people who have registered for the game in its history. Many of those folks probably checked it out, got frustrated with long lag times or lack of quests, and left forever. More useful numbers are the dynamic ones posted on the Second Life site, which this afternoon read: 12,354 residents logged in now; 459,062 residents logged in over the last 60 days.

Just because CNET puts up a building to host events doesn't mean people will attend those events, and that it will garner any modicum of attention there. And the Register recently questioned a close relationship between CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman and Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale.

[UPDATE: Terdiman tells me that the Register article was biased against him, and that the Register writer "hates Second Life." While the Register complained that Terdiman had listed Rosedale as a reference on his resume, Terdiman says he put Rosedale there because "he could speak to my reporting skills." See more on Terdiman's response to me in the UPDATE below.]

A recent "appearance" in Second Life by singer Ben Folds resulted in just 25 avatar onlookers, according to The Age.

"Obviously an effort like this isn't about record sales [by Ben Folds], but it's also clearly not about offering Second Life residents a valuable experience," wrote blogger Tony Walsh at Clickable Culture. "Like the handful of similar events preceding it, this one could only be leveraged for its external media buzz potential. The Age and other mainstream publications don't know enough to identify events like this as anything but a major-label snow-job (that's what we have bloggers for)."

Walsh has been checking out SL since its inception, and rang an early alarm against the hype last April, noting the small active user base and the technical glitches caused by user hacks of the system. But now that the media coverage is in overdrive, even Walsh has been unable to ignore Second Life, writing about the virtual world in six blog posts over the past week.

Despite the problems and excessive hype, Second Life and the other massively multiplayer virtual worlds do represent a strange and wonderful phenomenon worth writing about for journalists: people living in an alternate reality -- literally creating their alternate reality -- that affects their "First Life" either through virtual relationships or by running real businesses. Hopefully, more journalists will be able to tell the story of these cultural shifts without becoming the pawns (and customers) of the game's creator.

What do you think? Do you play Second Life regularly and what motivates you to spend time there? What do you think about Reuters having a correspondent in the game, and the media companies' push to open up virtual presences in SL? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

UPDATE: In an email to me, CNET's Daniel Terdiman, who has been writing about Second Life, explained that he didn't see a conflict of interest for media companies writing about the virtual world and also setting up shop there:

The money that CNET and Wired and Reuters (though I can't speak for them, because I don't know the specifics, but I am making an educated guess), spent setting up presences in Second Life didn't go to Linden Lab. That's not how Second Life works. At least in the case of CNET, our investment went entirely to a third-party contractor, and Linden Lab got none of it. That's the point. When I pitched the idea of a CNET presence in Second Life to my bosses, I made the explicit point that the money would not go to Linden Lab because I knew that if it did, there would be a direct conflict of interest.

And just to be clear, I don't even pay for the account I use for my CNET activities in Second Life. It's a free account, since I don't own any Second Life land. So as far as the CNET/Linden Lab relationship goes, not one penny has changed hands.

That might be true, however the fact that media organizations such as Wired, CNET and Reuters have made a concerted marketing push into the game seems like a validation of the game as a business platform. Would Adam Reuters ever write a piece explaining why Second Life will never really gain critical mass, and tell people not to visit the world, when he is now living his professional life there? I still believe that the journalists and media companies here are treading a thin line between being objective observers and touters of SL. Why couldn't Reuters just assign Pasick to cover online worlds or online gaming in general and not specifically Second Life?

In a fascinating survey done by Pew Internet & American Life and Elon University, various experts weighed in on possible future scenarios for 2020, including the following:

In 2020, networked communications have leveled the world into one big political, social, and economic space in which people everywhere can meet and have verbal and visual exchanges regularly, face-to-face, over the Internet. English will be so indispensable in communicating that it displaces some languages.

It's a controversial contention -- that English will actually displace other languages -- and most respondents (57%) disagreed with that statement. Many people thought that automated translation technologies will improve to the point where language differences might evaporate in instant messaging or email conversations. Perhaps that could make a difference, too, in the amount and diversity of media we can consume online. If we could understand the vast array of Mandarin-language blogs, could we learn more about what's going on in China?

Internet architecture pioneer and Microsoft wireless networking guru Christian Huitema responded to the survey scenario by noting how technology had actually enabled communication across language divides -- rather than forcing people to learn English in every instance.

"Computer technology increases the frequency of communication, which creates a desire to communicate across boundaries," Huitema wrote. "But the technology also enables communication in multiple languages, using various alphabets. In fact by 2020 we might see automatic translation systems."

Others pointed out that the Internet and technology has actually helped to preserve dying languages by allowing people to communicate with other people who may have been dispersed around the world.

Steve Cisler, who is working on satellite-based public-access Internet projects, answered the survey question like this: "Indigenous languages will have a hard time changing to accommodate the impact of popular media languages, though more people will use ICT [information and communication technology] to try to revitalize some languages or spread the use of them outside of local places."

There was also a thesis that the English language itself would be transformed by 2020, absorbing words and slang from other languages, and even taking on some of the abbreviations that proliferate in electronic communication (e.g. IMHO = in my humble opinion). One respondent felt that English would break into many sublanguages, while another considered the possibility that there would be more English dialects created by the mixing of so many cultures in the online realm.

The Rise of Mandarin

Many experts who answered the survey noted that as millions more Chinese started to go online, Mandarin might challenge the dominance of English as the lingua franca. One structural change that could help other languages prosper online is coming from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The group is finally testing foreign-language domain names so that people around the world could enjoy a web-surfing experience completely in their own language. That might well speed the rise of other languages such as Mandarin online.

Bret Fausett, who runs the ICANN blog, and U.S. Internet policy analyst Alan Inouye both predicted a decline in English dominance online.

"We're at the peak of the English language on the Internet," Fausett wrote. "As internationalized domain names are introduced over the next few years, allowing users to conduct their entire online experience in their native language, English will decline as the central language of the Internet."

Inouye didn't like the idea of English "displacing" other languages. He said English would continue to be the de facto international language, but saw hope for the rise in Mandarin online.

"There are countervailing forces against English language dominance on networks," Inouye wrote. "Networks such as the Internet facilitate the development of communities of common interests and languages among people who may be widely dispersed geographically. Also, we will see a dramatic increase in Chinese-language content."

One of the great features of the Pew/Elon survey is that they allow people to submit their own takes on the questions posed to experts on a special website. For this particular scenario on the English language displacing other languages, Pew/Elon has a full page of quotes from people who remained anonymous. On that page, many people spoke up about the rise of Mandarin online, and against the notion that English would dominate in 2020. Their consensus was that English is a bridging language, and will continue to be one, but it will not largely displace or invalidate other languages.

Here's a smattering of anonymous quotes on the subject:

"Hindi or Chinese might be the dominant internet language by [2020]."

"The role of English has only gone down over the past decade. Maybe it's time for us all to learn Mandarin. That would make sense."

"Local languages and cultures will continue to show resilience. There will be a backlash. English at a low level will spread wider, but indigenous languages will be just as indispensable."

"It has often been said that a language is a dialect that has its own army. Just as languages often spread through conquest, English will continue to spread through economic conquest. Not that English-speaking countries will necessarily rule, but the need for ever-bigger markets will force consolidation into those languages which already have the most speakers. English will be one of those languages, but not the only one."

"English currently dominates the Internet; that will continue to decrease irrespective of the fact that English will continue to grow as language of science and education. The Internet will become much more language diverse!"

What do you think? Will English continue to be the lingua franca online and in global business and tourism? Can Mandarin gain a foothold online or will its pictorial characters hinder wider growth? What advantages and disadvantages do you see in having a global common language?

UPDATE: A lot of you made persuasive arguments in the comments, doubting that Mandarin could gain on English as an international language. My gut feeling is that you're right, English will remain as the dominant second language around the world, and Mandarin will gain in importance but perhaps not surpassing English. Perhaps the problem with my blog post is the overly simplistic headline. A more accurate headline would be: "The Global Language: Mandarin Will Gain But Not Overtake English by 2020." Perhaps a bit clunky but more accurate.

While there are plenty of big news outlets such as the BBC that accept photo and video submissions from their audience, and phone services that let you send photos to moblogs or mobile blogs, the idea of one global service for submissions from every type of cell phone hasn't caught on yet.

Sundelof has spent much of the past school year at Stanford developing a prototype of such a service, currently mocked up at InTheFieldOnline.net. I met him for lunch and he showed me how simple the system was. Take a photo or video with your camera phone. Send a text message with attachment to an email address, and voila! it's posted to the site after just a brief delay. He's tested it in rural villages in India, and with his parents in Sweden, where he grew up.

At the moment, he's working on a "cooler version" of the service in the hopes of attracting Silicon Valley funding, or perhaps paying customers who run newspaper sites or other media outlets. His hope is to build an open source software platform -- with programming code that can be improved and modified by anyone -- to enable people to send in photos or video to central sites or to their blogs or websites of their choice. The simpler, the better.

I was impressed with Sundelof's knowledge of citizen journalism and his hopes for its future, envisioning a time when more people could help tell the stories around them, and traditional media might merge with the best citizen contributions to tell a more complete truth. Even though he has more of a background in technology than in media, Sundelof has an interesting philosophy about citizen journalism and takes an outsider's perspective on hot-button issues such as moderating forums (he likes them more open) and personalized news (he doesn't think people should be able to filter out bad news).

The following is an edited transcript of our wide-ranging discussion on his project and the shifting media landscape.

What first got you interested in citizen journalism?

Erik Sundelof: Before I came here to Stanford [in September 2005], I'd never worked with citizen media. And I came here because the Reuters Foundation wants to help their organization to develop open source media software. When I came here I thought, what can we do for them that is something new? The problem with open source software is that they tend to copycat. Like OpenOffice is just a copy of Microsoft Office. They're not doing anything new. They're not trying to compete by doing anything new, they're just trying to beat the price.

I started to think about what would be my first thought after a car bomb went off. Certainly not to run to an Internet cafe. That's probably the last thing I would think about. But I might call my friends with my cell phone to tell them I'm all right. Then you have your phone out, so now the possibility is that you could also record that, shoot it and send it to Reuters, the BBC or wherever. That would be a great tool to really create a vehicle and channel for those people to get their frustration out, that would help the democracy part.

I have been dealing with blogs but never put a category of citizen media on it. I don't see the need for putting a label on it as 'citizen media' -- why not just call it media. Because everything else is just called news and it depends on how you present it, how you package it and mash it up.

When I was at the We Media conference at Reuters in London, I learned that Reuters is thinking a lot about this subject of citizen journalism, but they also have all these professional journalists out in the field, so they are trying to figure out how to make it work.

Sundelof: I think the right combination is to have the [reported] article and then a small box with a way to give users to tell their side of the story, their contribution.

How do you moderate that? How do you filter it?

Sundelof: I think it becomes easier when you're using cell phone technology, when the user needs their identification. You need to make sure the news is all accurate and that the news is coming from the location where it happened, which is easier if you have a computer but with a cell phone you have to do triangulation. If you're not Google, you don't have the money to do that. So without money, you have to make a deal with a cell phone service.

They have to have a global positioning system (GPS) to know where you are?

Sundelof: You can still use triangulation to find out which cell tower the call is coming from. Then you need to map that, which takes time and resources, and you end up needing Google, because they can get the attention of cell phone providers. [Cell phone companies] won't listen to smaller organizations, I think that's the main problem.

During the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina, people who were stranded in homes were sending text messages from their cell phones to friends to tell them where they were. Those messages were posted to a blog at the Times-Picayune newspaper's website, which then was read by emergency crews who went out and saved the people.

Sundelof: There were similar things after the Pakistan earthquake, because the only thing people could rely on was text messages. The volume of calls becomes so high that you can't get through by voice but you can get through with text messages because it uses less data. What is lacking is the way to organize the material when it comes in. There's so many people sending in material, that it's difficult to authenticate everything quickly. You need to have permission from the network provider. They have to be able to give you that information, and there are a whole lot of legal issues there.

There are many different aspects to this, and the cell phone is a perfect complement to news contributed to the web. You can get it online easily. There were similar things going on after the London bombings, but the media collected that and then put it up on the web. It would have been better if you could just upload it immediately.

There are numerous examples of similar stuff going on but the big news organizations don't get it at all. They get stuck in details and legal issues that they really shouldn't care about. I can understand that the lawyers [worry about unfiltered material] but there are always ways around it.

It's a control issue, not wanting to give up control. There's a fear that if there are citizen journalists, then what's the role of the professional journalists? Someone encroaching on their turf and not being paid anything or being paid very little. So the professionals are afraid their whole purpose is disappearing but I don't think it's really true.

Sundelof: They have a clearer purpose because they can actually focus on bigger events and present more well thought out articles...Events like Rodney King and similar events, it's really interesting to have cell phones as part of the scene. Because it's much harder to get away with that if you have 40 people with cell phones sending it in. You can't say, 'No, it was not police brutality.' Well we have 40 different people saying they saw it -- with proof.

I really see an opening here for citizen contributions. The key here is that the media organizations need to realize they are losing control. They can't really control [the news] now because people are posting this stuff to other blogs. I think it would be better to merge traditional reporting with citizen media rather than have a [totally] new media. To take the best of the old fashioned news organizations and bring in the power of the bloggers, because you have so many people investigating. Mix them and you have an extremely good organization and you'll have content that's really important in finding out the truth.

I guess it's the idea of Yahoo News or Google News where they are trying to aggregate the different types of media on the same page.

Sundelof: I'm actually against Google News, the way it is now, because I don't believe you should customize the news. You shouldn't present to the person only what he wants to see. Then we're creating narrow-minded people. They only see what they want to see, and when they hear something else, they say, 'That didn't happen.' Well it did, but you chose to go to Google News and only see what you wanted to see all the time.

I think it's really dangerous, because I don't feel that news should be in the hands of such a big corporation such as Google. There's already a problem here in the States over the ownership structure of news companies. I don't think the solution is to go to one big company instead and say that Google News should solve it all. I think users like it because then they don't get so upset. They get exposed to just the things they want to get exposed to.

I know that people here use their cell phones differently than they do in Europe or Japan. And in Africa, the landlines are so bad that cell phones have taken over as means for communication. It's much more important in developing nations.

Sundelof: It's much cheaper to build the infrastructure for cell phones, and Africa is the most perfect place for launching any cell phone service because it's so flat you don't have trouble with the base stations, you don't need that many. You can still get decent coverage, of course you do have the problem with dictators which you can't really solve.

But in Asia you don't need to get that much money for each transaction because you have so many people. If you add up the people in China and India, you have one fourth of the population of the world. If they send one message each, and you say they pay $1 each per year, that's $2 billion. There's no way that your cost for setting up the system will match that $2 billion. It's not even close. That's where you have the big markets, because you don't have to charge them much at all.

We're running a number of test cases. We have been running this in India and have tried it out in most parts of the world. It's worked well in the rural parts of India. We tried it out with an organization called Video Volunteers. They are bringing in solutions for people to do their own documentaries in villages in India. They go over there, hand over the video equipment, teach them how to use the equipment and edit the video, and let them do what they want. They're creating a dialogue without the Internet. Information technology is not always about the Internet.

I want to make sure even my parents in Sweden can do it. They just have to remember a number.

How does InTheFieldOnline.net differ from all the moblogging functions that cell phone companies offer, or sites such as moblogUK, which offers free blog space for camera phone pictures?

Sundelof: They are similar but to some extent they are lacking in simplicity. If you don't do everything right, you are thrown out of the system. I say we just capture it all and do the best we can.

It's more of an open system?

Sundelof: Yes, that's right. They usually don't support other cell phone services. They say you have to post it on a moblog, I say you can post it anywhere. So you can post to Flickr or Blogger or Drupal. The difference is we allow people to post on the media of their choice, rather than on my site, I don't care.

*****

What do you think of such a service? Can citizen journalism via cell phones help enhance the news? Would you use this service? How? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I'll be updating this blog post when Sundelof unveils the next version of his prototype in the next few weeks.

That's where the promise of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) comes in, a geeky technology that lets you subscribe to your favorite news sites, blogs, and podcasts. You then use a news reader -- either software or web-based -- to look at all your sites at a glance. Rather than having to go visit 85 different sites, you can use your feed reader to go through all the recent headlines from those sites, and you can even read the content from within the reader.

There's a lot to like about RSS technology and the idea that it will save you time in web browsing. But there's also a lot to learn about it, and a lot that could be improved. So, starting with the Your Take question asking you to tout the reader of your choice, I'm going to make U.S. Independence Day week into RSS Week here at MediaShift. We have a Top 5 dedicated to RSS, and tomorrow I'll have a special Guide to RSS.

Today is the day to dream a little dream, hope a little hope, and imagine a future time when RSS technology turns a little less geeky and becomes more practical for the common news junkie. I have tried various news readers and personalized news sites but very few have become constant companions. I don't want the feed reader to add more time to my reading day -- I want to subtract the searching, the yearning, the culling, the off-topic tangents that take me away from what I want.

10 Steps to Making Really Satisfying Syndication

1. Better suggested feeds. Some feed readers helpfully suggest other feeds that might interest me. That's nice, but very few have comprehensive lists of what I might want.

2. Recommend stories or posts depending on my preferences. Give more personalization features that let me filter the barrage of reading material in a meaningful way based on what types of information I want and my mood. For instance, today I might want an emphasis on sports and business and tomorrow I might want updates on the War on Terror and political policy.

3. Automatically rank all posts or stories depending on how other people rate them, or by how many other people read them. Some sites such as Digg or Daily RSS offer community-rated news, but not within a news reader's interface.

4. Show me related posts. As I'm reading, if I find a story that I particularly like, I'd like to see blogs that refer to that story or other stories that are similar to that one.

5. When pulling up one particular source, such as New York Times Technology or BuzzMachine, let me order the posts by Most Relevant to my preferences, or Most Popular by other readers, or Most Commented On (if they are blog posts with comments). That gives me a better idea of what I should read.

6. Learn my preferences dynamically. Based on what I read and click on over time, the RSS reader could start to order my sources and the articles by my past behavior. This is a similar functionality to the personalized news site, Findory.

7. Tangent warnings. If I start to read articles or blog posts that are not in my preferred subject areas, the RSS reader should warn me in a polite but firm way that I am going off on a tangent and need to focus.

8. Make adding feeds a snap. If I am visiting a site or blog, I don't want to have to hunt around to find its RSS feed link. I want some type of shortcut that will add the page's feed to my reader in as few steps as possible.

9. Highlight hot topics. A computer algorithm could search through all the stories I subscribe to (and perhaps related ones online) and find the hot topics that people are writing about and create a running list of these.

10. Block news I don't want. Maybe I'm tired of news from Iraq or the World Cup, or I've taped the Oscars on my DVR and don't want to know who won them yet. Create a "block news" feature that lets me block news stories or blog posts on these topics that I don't want to see.

Some of these features exist in part in current news readers, and some are on the drawing board. The personalized RSS news reader, Feeds 2.0, shows some promise and I've just started playing around with that in the beta test. And blogger Chrono Cracker has a nice list of 25 features he'd like to see in The Perfect RSS Web-Based Reader.

Now it's your turn. What features would make RSS feed readers better, more potent, and help you save time? How would you describe the perfect RSS news reader? Share your thoughts below in comments.

After a January morning spent swimming in the warm ocean water off San Francisco at Ocean Beach (thank you, global warming!), I finally settle down for a day of work in my home office. My desk is littered with papers, but there's no computer in sight, no computer monitor. I pull out a largish cell phone from my pocket, and unfold it on my desk. Out pops a shiny pull-screen that stretches half the length of my desk. I hang the paper-like screen on a hook above my desk, and put on a headset and hear a familiar voice.

"Hi Mark, how was your swim?"

"Nice, Myrna. It was even warmer than last January. Can you bring up the news?"

"Local, national or international?"

"International, customize for my preferred topics."

"Unrest in the Middle East, elections in Spain or downhill skiing competition in the Alps?"

"Let's go with skiing first."

The screen in front of me transforms into full-screen video of the competition taking place, with downhill skiiers taking turns going downhill at incredibly fast speeds. Ads flash across the bottom of my screen.

"Can I get the Swiss TV angle on this competition?"

"Sure, it will only cost you 50 Google cents per minute. Or watch an ad for your preferred topics to get three minutes free."

"I'll take the ad, but can you make it financial advice? I need to make some decisions soon."

An ad for a local financial service plays, and I hit the Save button so I can contact them later. Next comes the Swiss TV shots of the competition, with cameras embedded in the helmets and skis of the skiiers. Pushing a button on my screen lets me toggle the angles. Obviously, I am procrastinating for the real work I have to do today.

"Myrna, can I get a different soundtrack for this race?"

"Punk metal, gospel hip-hop or electro-country music?"

"Perhaps something more ambient?"

Soothing music comes on the headset, and the competition finally ends. I'm startled to feel the floor below me rolling and shaking. Some photos fall off my walls and the ground moves violently. It stops abruptly. Was it an earthquake?

"Myrna, can you pull up San Francisco breaking news, earthquake?"

"Mark, USGS reports activity in your area. Looks like a 5.2 on the Richter scale."

The display shows a map of the San Francisco Bay Area, and a point on the hills near Fremont is flashing, showing the epicenter. Soon, some choices pop up on my screen: Local Wire, Citizen Wire, National Wire. I choose Local Wire, and see some copy as it is written by a local reporter on what has happened. There is some damage to the 280 highway overpass near where I live.

Next I choose Citizen Wire, and four faces pop up on the screen in different windows. I choose a guy who is near Highway 280, using his videophone to show the damage to the freeway.

"One car seems to have gone over the side of the freeway during the earthquake," he says, showing the place where the freeway guard rail has broken off. "Everyone stopped when they felt the swaying. We're not sure how safe this road is at the moment. If you are driving on 280, try to avoid the 6th St. onramp."

I pause the video.

"Myrna, can you message my family and close friends to make sure they're OK?"

"Sure thing, Mark. Will let you know if there's trouble."

I watch more video of the scene on 280, and now choose the National Wire. This brings up more choices: Hard News, Soft News, with various political slants. I try Hard News Moderate. A news conference is in progress with San Francisco mayor Craig Newmark explaining that help is on the way to people injured on Highway 280 and at other flashpoints throughout the city.

As the video plays, I can choose to watch ads scrolling below the video, or can pay into my Google line of credit to eliminate ads. I can also choose to put some of the payment toward earthquake relief from the Red Cross, or to fund an investigative report by the Local Wire on earthquake perparedness.

Windows pop up showing my son is safe at school, and my wife is safe at her work. I breathe a sigh of relief.

"Myrna, can I see satellite images of San Francisco? Give me a fly-by of the damage zones. Switch to classical music soundtrack, something more dramatic but not melodramatic."

After checking out various news sources and judging their work, I'm ready to file my own report as a news jockey for the Citizen Wire. The more people who watch my report, the more money I can make. Or if I reach the right people who are willing to support my work financially, I don't have to worry about getting a big audience.

"Myrna, can you record this to my video news blog?" I look into the tiny camera mounted on my wall.

"Today at 10:46 a.m. Pacific Time, a 5.2 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area..."