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.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have been a testament to this new kind of protest coverage (as perhaps the Tea Party movement was before it). The protests were initially written off, ignored and marginalized for several weeks. But the outpouring of support in Facebook and Twitter streams, and the challenges from upstart outlets to the mainstream media coverage or lack thereof  coupled with the tenacity of protesters, finally caught mainstream attention.

Last Thursday, the momentum shifted. The New York Times put #OWS on the cover, and with Amanda Knox shuttered in her home, the cable news channels switched protest coverage into overdrive. Once the dominoes started to fall, politicians started feeling the pressure to weigh in, creating yet more news.

While the proliferation of alternative media outlets certainly deserves credit here, another big change from the past is the diversity of voices coming from within mainstream media itself.

I first heard about the #OWS protests in their first week from the twitter feed of New York Times Assistant Managing Editor Jim Roberts. He might not have thought the protests we’re worthy of print at the time, but clearly they were interesting enough for a few tweets.

On September 30^th, he tweeted that Occupy Wall Street was the most searched term on the Times’ website. Five or Ten years ago, the paper would have barely been able to measure what was a clear message to engage with more coverage.

For now, OWS coverage continues full clip, and protests are springing up in hundreds of cities around the country. In a bygone media era, would the same movement have just fizzled out?

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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.

NEW YORK TIMES – It’s the pre-eminent U.S. news source for compelling global news coverage. This app does not add much to what you can read in the paper, but it allows you to access that information anywhere for free, a significant advantage because paper distribution is far from universal and increasingly expensive. This mobile app is essential for anyone who wants to stay up on the news. As a prime example, the cover of the Sunday, December 19th New York Times Magazine featured an innovative mobile feature. It was a Quick Response (QR)  code made of balloons that sent you to a series of clever and artistic short videos about ‘The Year in Ideas’ articles.

KING5 — This Seattle-based NBC affiliate is the strongest local TV station for news and this mobile app is the best local source I’ve found. It also features a ‘Video’ tab enabling low quality but adequate images that stream easily over the 3G network. The ‘Traffic’ tab is also thorough and useful.What it lacks is location-based features. A map which includes the information about news/traffic/sports/weather in the vicinity of the user would add immediacy.

NPR NEWS – Full disclosure, I work at an NPR affiliate station KUOW in Seattle. With that noted, I found this app outstanding for several reasons. It contains rewritten transcripts of the radio stories and links to audio versions of the stories from the program. The audio can be stacked on a playlist; links to specific NPR programs (All Things Considered, Fresh Air, Car Talk); a link to your local NPR station to hear their programs and a station locator tab to find the nearest NPR affiliate. One desirable improvement would be an app that would learn from the stories you select what kind of stories you like. A tab called ‘For You’ could include stories recommended by an algorithm extrapolating from your previous choices.

This final feature on the NPR app points to a weakness in all these news sources – they do not exploit location based mobile phone features common with Yelp and Foursqure. News apps should include on a map of your vicinity with flags linking to news stories and features. For example you could find The New York Times ’36 Hours in…” travel feature about a place you’re visiting, but why should the app make you search? It could recognize where you are and provide you with a list. These news apps could also integrate other databases to show nearby bus stops and arrival times, crime stats, and deals from nearby businesses. For example, under an ‘Entertainment’ or ‘Deal’ tab, the user might see that a play starts at a theater in an hour and deeply discounted tickets are available right now. Or a flower shop around the corner has a closeout deal on roses.

While the best news apps are doing a good job getting what they do to the mobile phone user, there are glimmers of the potential.

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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.

This is not the Times’ first effort to charge for content. In 2007, after a two-year foray into TimesSelect, a subscription service, Times management decided to offer its online content for free because they believed that the site’s massive readership — 20 million unique visitors – would bring in considerable revenue once online advertising techniques improved. Times executives hoped their strong online efforts would lead them to stand while other newspapers crumbled.

However, the paper’s advertising revenue has fallen with the economy, and the Times seems to be optimistic that its past will not determine its future. Jason Preston of Eat Sleep Publish supports the proposed metered system: ”The market has changed significantly since (what was it, 2007?) and they’re planning to try something totally different … so what they learned is: don’t do Times Select.”

Preston continues,

“I think the NYT is in a perfect position to introduce a metered model, and I think that if that’s how they proceed that they’ll be moving in the right direction. I suspect that their overall traffic will continue to grow, not shrink, as more people take up the NYT as a casual (and free) habit, and ad revenue will grow, as the NYT gains the opportunity to argue to its advertisers that users are paying to view their content.”

The proposed metering may mean big changes for people who rely on The New York Times. UW International Studies professor Tony Lucero requires students in his “Making of the 21st Century” course to read the Times every day. He said this will be a requirement regardless of the cost to access Times content, but he acknowledged that the Times is not the only option for reliable news.

“[The New York Times] is a good source for international news, and it is an influential paper, one that shapes and reflects some of the major political discussions of the day … At the same time, the NYT often drives me crazy (the Haiti earthquake on front page, of course, but Conan O’Brien?) I also want students to read critically — think about how stories are reported and what kinds of ideological issues and choices can be seen both in the news reporting and the editorial pages. This could be done with other publications, sure … That said, in the future I will probably consider other sources.”

Subscription models typically work when a media brand offers content people can access nowhere else — such as small-town news — or produces content of extraordinary quality. People might pay for excellent foreign affairs coverage, but will they pay for the latest news about Conan? The New York Times may be overestimating what people are willing to spend money on — and competing news outlets with free services may benefit.

The proposed metering raises additional questions. Journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis tweeted a question posed by one of his followers: “I wonder if excellent NYT iPhone app will continue being free, bundled with subs, or metered?” Jarvis himself expressed dissatisfaction in a blog post by asking, “So why charge your best customers? Why single them out? Why risk driving them away?” Jarvis agrees with Clay Shirky that micropayments such as these are not the answer to saving journalism.

The metering would not go into effect for several months, though a decision is expected any day now.

What do you think? Would you pay to read The New York Times online?

image by wallyg via Creative Commons

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“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.”

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“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.

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In spite of what some of Pogue’s readers commented, the principles of simplicity are all around us and it’s an important model to study and understand. It can be a core guide us through creation, from a pitch, to a script, or an application. For example, check out 37 signals, a company purely based on the idea of simplicity by developing discrete task applications. They have produced incredible popular and simple applications like basecamp (Wired has featured the company, the owners and their products several times).

Furthermore, the immediate benefit of simplicity is SPEED, which in today’s world seems to be the winning strategy. Kirk and John produced 5 videos in 10 days using the Flip. They shot on the road, edited in the back of the car, and published whenever they found a wifi spot. All this possible because they had a little, simple, push-the-button camera.

Posted by Adri

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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!

Click here to see the NY post.

Click here to visit Kirk’s blog.

So… as we move into packaging the content of our class work and investigating distribution options in the indie class, we will need your help keeping your eyes open for any information that may relate to what we’re doing. Whether it is technology related, or digital storytelling or media transformation I think part of the value of experiencing digital storytelling is to understand how it fits within the current context of what other people are doing/studying. So any news/stories you see out there please blog about it!

-Adri

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Click here to read the full article

Posted by Adri

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