What do the Occupy Wall Street protests have to do with the digital news revolution?

Turns out, quite a bit.

Occupy Seattle Photos (c) Eric Becker / We Are Shouting

Until recently, the effective strength and success of protest movements was ultimately determined not in the streets, but in editorial meetings. Newspapers and broadcasters would decide how much play to give the protesters, who would wait with bated breath for the 5 o’clock news or the next morning’s edition to see how much anyone else would hear about their cause. Sometimes they got plenty of attention, like when the WTO came to Seattle in 1999. But this system awarded aggressive behavior from protesters and police, taking notice proportional to property destruction and tear gas, while massive marches like the ones on the eve of the Iraq invasion were effectively ignored if they were peaceful.

But the game has changed.

Newspapers don’t dictate what’s news now. With the rise of Twitter, and the bloggosphere, the diversity of other voices online tell them what’s news. Read more…

As everyone who follows news closely has noticed, the big breaking news story is easily available. If you are on any social network following news outlets or have news hound friends, the bare facts of the major stories (Michael Jackson dies, Congress revokes Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) appear almost instantly. So what value can a news organization truly add with a mobile phone app? As the host of a daily news/talk show, I’m intent on staying up on news. Here’ s a look at the mobile apps from five leading news sources with commentary on their individual strengths and a few thoughts about where they fall short. All were used on an iPhone 3Gs.

AP MOBILE – Fast and comprehensive, it’s a quick way to follow up on the headlines and see photos while on the move. It allows you to designate one or more locations under the ‘Local’ tab. Seattle users see headline from the Seattle Times and Seattle P.I., but the story list is incomplete. Many top Seattle Times stories are withheld. It has an option to send photos and video, but that’s buried  under the ‘More’ tab. It’s got the best weather option I’ve seen but developers could add more categorization to the ‘Local’ tab. Under the current configurations sports, tech and breaking news are bunched together.

CNN – Like AP, it’s a good first stop for an overview of national and international stories. The ‘My CNN’ tab includes local stories from KING5 TV and local blogs, but lacks the depth the Seattle Times and P.I. stories provide. The big draw is watching the TV stories and live feeds from breaking news events like presidential press conferences. Prominently featured is the ‘I-Report’ tab, an entire section of user-generated videos and stories. You are encouraged to report by uplinking video and there is even an assignment page where the day I looked users were assigned winter news reports.

Read more…

Update: The New York Times announced on January 20 that they will indeed begin to meter content, starting in 2011. Read the Times’ statement here.

Bloggers’ reactions? Mashable predicts that the number of sites linking to the Times will decrease, negatively impacting traffic, while most readers will move on to another news source after they reach their limit. TechCrunch breaks down the numbers and comes to a skeptical, yet optimistic, conclusion. PaidContent.org, an information company owned by Guardian Media Group, justifies the decision.

*****

The New York Times may be close to charging for online content.

According to New York Magazine, the venerable “Gray Lady” is seriously considering a metered system that will allow consumers to read all of the paper’s content — up to a point. Once that limit is reached, the reader must pay for articles. This allows new visitors to explore the site while charging the heaviest users. Seems fair enough, right? The question is whether the Times’ audience will agree to pay or go elsewhere for their news. Read more…

Jack Shafer in Slate makes the case against non-profit foundations becoming the financial base for newspapers.

“In my experience, foundations that fund journalism directly—as opposed to journalistic education—are more interested in promoting what they consider “social justice” than promoting journalism. For them, a newspaper is just a means to an end.”

New York Magazine ‘s Emily Nussbaum recounts the efforts to keep the Gray Lady au corrant with social media.

“On the day Barack Obama was elected, a strange new feature appeared on the website of the New York Times. Called the Word Train, it asked a simple question: What one word describes your current state of mind? Readers could enter an adjective or select from a menu of options. They could specify whether they supported McCain or Obama. Below, the results appeared in six rows of adjectives, scrolling left to right, coded red or blue, descending in size of font. The larger the word, the more people felt that way.

NY Times David Pogue’s review of the Flip continues to attract a lot of reaction. See the follow up post ‘Why There Aren’t more Flips“. Funny how this little thing can create some much reaction. It’s premise is SIMPLICITY (even though sometimes it fails to deliver on that). This principle simplicity seems to the key to success when it come to technology and it’s most iconic example: the iPod.

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Two weeks ago when David Pogue published a review of the Flip Camera in the Technology section, I contacted him to tell him about our class project and I mentioned our general experience with the Flip. I invited him to take a look to our blog citing that we had produced some videos documenting the experience with the Flip.

The email has paid off. David Pogue blogged about one of Kirk’s most controversial videos (comparison btw HD and the Flip) and Kirk is getting a ton of hits on his blog. Congrats Kirk!

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Today’s technology section of the New York Times led with a review of or dear (for some) little Flip camera. David Pogue discovered some of its great advantages (plug & play video) and some of its hurdles (yeah, Codecs and the darn button that won’t turn on). I emailed him our class project so hopefully he’ll take a look at our journey with the Flip since he probably didn’t go as far as Brian did — taking apart the camera to explore the mic — and Kirk’s how-to videos are great resource for Flip fans all over. And most of all, I hope he enjoys our five shorts documenting how technology is making the media flip.

Click here to read the full article

Posted by Adri