If you attended Ross Dawson’s Future of Media Sum­mit in Syd­ney or Sil­i­con Val­ley yes­ter­day, there are a few core take-​​aways you might have been left with:

  • the arti­fi­cial split/​war between jour­nal­ism and new media prevails
  • every­one — PR, jour­nal­ism, adver­tis­ing and broad­cast­ing — is try­ing to fig­ure out this social net­work­ing and social media stuff (and I guess that’s good for peo­ple like me who can help with that)
  • old media is chang­ing and com­ing into the new world, although the old “pump it out and they will con­sume” atti­tude still persists
  • closed for­mats and lim­ited avail­abil­ity are still seen as viable busi­ness models
  • what to do with and how to man­age par­tic­i­pant cre­ated con­tent (rather than user gen­er­ated con­tent. Thanks, Chris Saad) is a puz­zle many organ­i­sa­tions are strug­gling with.

There was a lot more, but these were cer­tainly the most strik­ing to me. I’ve sum­marised my think­ing around each of these issues below.

We don’t need no blogucation

The false dichotomy of the schism between the pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists, jour­nal­ism edu­ca­tors and aca­d­e­mics one one side, and the world of new media, par­tic­u­larly as embod­ied by blog­gers, on the other, pre­vails. It seems largely per­pet­u­ated by a some­what chau­vin­is­tic atti­tude on the part of some pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists who cling to the notion that a blog­ger, no mat­ter how good a writer and reporter of infor­ma­tion that they might be, is still some­thing to be looked down upon as a non-​​professional by the pro­fes­sion of journalism.

This atti­tude was brought home par­tic­u­larly strongly by The Aus­tralian’s Jane Schulze who evi­denced a par­tic­u­larly dis­dain­ful atti­tude towards blog­gers, and Deakin University’s Stephen Quinn, who was sur­prised when I exploded from the audi­ence with a vehe­ment “yes” to his ques­tion whether, if an “ama­teur”, doing the same work and equipped with the tools of a jour­nal­ist, ought to be con­sid­ered to be doing jour­nal­ism with­out hav­ing been prop­erly trained, autho­rised and edited.

Later in the day, at the Future of Jour­nal­ism round table, sev­eral of us opened the eyes of some of the jour­nal­ism types there when we revealed that yes, we do take our­selves seri­ously, we do fact-​​check, we do seek to inter­view seri­ous experts for appro­pri­ate writ­ings and we weren’t just shoot­ing off at the mouth in an unfil­tered op-​​ed man­ner. I don’t know whether Stil­gher­rian, Chris Saad and I moved any moun­tains, but we cer­tainly seemed to chip away at some of the ivory in the tower.

It both­ers me that a good pro­por­tion of the jour­nal­ism pro­fes­sion appear threat­ened by the new media, espe­cially pow­er­ful and high-​​reputation blog­gers. I believe there is a place for jour­nal­ists and blog­gers and that their aims and out­puts, while often shar­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties, are dif­fer­ent. There will always be a place for good, well-​​researched jour­nal­ism; whether it’s long form fea­tures or punchy news. The same goes for qual­ity blog­ging. What there isn’t a place for is low qual­ity in either camp. Rub­bish is rub­bish wher­ever you find it.

Blog­gers too, how­ever, are not blame­less. There are some in the blog­ger com­mu­nity who seem overly sen­si­tive to the atti­tude of the jour­nal­ism half of the equa­tion. This feel­ing of being chal­lenged, and the pre­cious sen­si­tiv­ity evi­denced on both sides needs to be swept away. Blog­gers and jour­nal­ists both have their place and both have value in the world of new media.

New and scary (and largely ignored)

Every­one seems to realise that social media (that cre­ated by par­tic­i­pants) and social net­work­ing (the con­nec­tions between par­tic­i­pants) are impor­tant. But still, they remain clue­less (not in a pejo­ra­tive, but rather a fac­tual sense) as to what to do about it. As much as the use of social tools within organ­i­sa­tional walls remains a chal­lenge (and it is a huge chal­lenge for most organ­i­sa­tions), the issue of the infor­mal organ­i­sa­tion, social net­work­ing within and across organ­i­sa­tional walls and in par­tic­u­lar, par­tic­i­pant gen­er­ated con­tent — what to do with mate­r­ial related to your brand that was gen­er­ated in an unof­fi­cial capac­ity — is a major hurdle.

Whether it’s brand hijack­ing by ad mashups, neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity in an uncon­trolled space like Get­Sat­is­fac­tion or the issue of how to com­mu­ni­cate with mavens for your brand, most organ­i­sa­tions haven’t yet dealt with the issue and are baf­fled as to how to do so. These organ­i­sa­tions have a lot of work to do, and the idea of an uncon­trolled, open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tion about their brand, free of spin, is a ter­ri­fy­ing thing. Equally the PR, cre­ative and ad agen­cies these brands are talk­ing to are just as chal­lenged when it comes to build­ing strate­gies around social media.

In talk­ing to peo­ple from sev­eral cre­ative agen­cies yes­ter­day, they revealed that when these ideas are pre­sented to clients, they are often dis­missed out of hand as some­thing the brand “just doesn’t do”. Risky. Wouldn’t you rather be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion than the sub­ject of it (yes, Gavin, you can bor­row that)?

Our model is fire­hose

I was par­tic­u­larly bugged by Mark Antoni­tis of San Francisco’s KRON-​​TV. Much of what he said res­onated with me; he wants rel­e­vance in his pro­gram­ming, local focus, and an open mar­ket, but still believes that TV is going to win the con­tent war by sim­ply pro­duc­ing sheer vol­ume of mate­r­ial that we, the audi­ence, will pas­sively con­sume, slouched on our couches. Obvi­ously, he’s not talked to Clay Shirky recently.

He is so wrong. What will win, ulti­mately, is well-​​produced infor­ma­tive or enter­tain­ing media. It won’t mat­ter whether it’s in full-​​1080p HD, ready for watch­ing on your 50-​​inch plasma. What mat­ters in an increas­ingly frag­mented media mar­ket­place is rel­e­vance, inter­ac­tion and con­tent quality.

Closed is broken

The ABC’s Mark Scott lauded the efforts of the BBC in pro­duc­ing a closed for­mat, lim­ited view­ing win­dow (seven days) media player that needed to be down­loaded from the BBC site. The ABC, appar­ently, is pro­duc­ing a sim­i­lar tool.

When ques­tions from the floor were asked for, both Chris Saad and I asked why this sort of wastage was occur­ring, when rather than a pro­pri­etary for­mat, lim­ited tool, an open for­mat usable on any device at any time and place wouldn’t be a bet­ter option. Scott avoided answer­ing the ques­tion. Obvi­ously, he’s never heard of Hulu and doesn’t get BitTorrent.

You want to do what with our brand?

The resound­ing suc­cess of some­thing like The Gruen Trans­fer, both in terms of its abil­ity to explode the myths around brand­ing and adver­tis­ing and to gen­er­ate mas­sive par­tic­i­pant uptake (there are many thou­sands of mashed up, user-​​made fake ads on the Gruen site, made with col­lat­eral pro­vided by the show’s mak­ers) should have ad-​​men, PR flacks and brands them­selves quak­ing in their prover­bial boots. Yet, more than any­thing, there is denial.

That par­tic­i­pants could be more than pas­sive and could be a pow­er­ful aid in gen­er­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing brand mes­sages, par­tic­u­larly when they are con­sid­ered and invited to to take part in an open con­ver­sa­tion is still largely a mys­tery to most Aus­tralian brands. In talk­ing to cre­ative agency staff yes­ter­day, they know they want to try these things but are fre­quently stymied by the man­age­ment of the brands, who still believe that retain­ing con­trol and push­ing mes­sages is the answer for them. The brands, 10 years on, haven’t yet read The Clue­train Man­i­festo. There is no con­ver­sa­tion as far as they’re concerned.

Oops! Dear car/​soft drink/​shoe/​beer/​widget man­u­fac­turer, you are in for a rude shock. We, the par­tic­i­pants, are already talk­ing about you. And we have been for some time. If you’re lucky, we’re com­pli­men­tary, often we’re not. You’re not in con­trol of our con­ver­sa­tion so per­haps it’s time you became a part of it and put in your best effort to human­ise your­self. Hmm?

What now?

Over­all, I came away from the day dis­ap­pointed in the closed-​​mindedness that pre­vails in some parts of the media indus­try (and some blog­gers too), but hope­ful that enough voices are want­ing to be heard that the switch to the future that is already here is per­haps not too far off.

You can read addi­tional cov­er­age at the FOM 08 blog, from Gavin Heaton, Stick­yAds and from Stil­gher­rian. If you’re espe­cially keen, you can read the Twit­ter backchan­nel.