Research on the declining credibility of established news organizations – this creates opportunities for new ones

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Pew Research Center has just released the latest results in an study that has been running since 1983 on the credibility of US news organizations under the title Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations. Some of the data is shown below.


Source: Pew Research Center for the People & The Press
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Free webinar July 19 on the Future of Media – Mobile, Social, Cloud… and Paid? with Ross Dawson and Gerd Leonhard

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Gerd Leonhard is a greatly valued friend and colleague in our shared calling as media futurists, and work together in The Futures Agency.

As part of our intent of working more together in both public forums and with leading media organizations we are announcing a free webinar:

The Future of Media: Mobile, Social, Cloud… and Paid?

July 19, 2012

8am US EDT
1pm United Kingdom
2pm Central European Time
8pm Singapore & Beijing
10pm Sydney
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Big moves at Fairfax: The global extinction of newspapers moves closer

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Today’s ‘Fairfax of the Future’ announcement from Australia’s second largest newspaper publisher Fairfax is massive news in Australia, and very significant in a global media context.

It has been a busy media day for me, so far doing interviews for SBS World News and ABC24 News as well as a number of radio stations, due to my earlier predictions of the extinction of newspapers. My Newspaper Extinction Timeline was launched in October 2010, at the time getting mainstream media coverage in over 30 countries and being seen by well over 1 million readers within one week.

Newspaper_Timeline_front.gif
Click on image to download full framework

Recently I have been reconsidering some of the forecast extinction dates for a number of countries, notably after my recent European speaking tour. Fairfax’s announcements today significantly shift forward the likely loss of news-on-paper as a significant media format, and in fact make 2022 seem an exceedingly optimistic timespan for newspapers to survive in Australia.
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Researchers develop ‘smart’ touch-responsive internet-enabled newspaper

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My European speaking tour (ending today) has had two primary themes: crowdsourcing and the future of corporate IT. However at a couple of points, notably a guest lecture to Moscow’s Higher School of Economics’ School of Journalism, I have delved into the future of media. As always, my well-known Newspaper Extinction Timeline has come up as a hot topic of discussion.

One of things I always have to point out is that we should not be comparing newspapers with the tablets of today when we think about the choices people will make in how they access news. Tablets similar to those of today will be given away for free and digital paper which has all the qualities of today’s paper plus the advantages of digital at a low cost will be the alternative.

The e-ink initiatives have some way to go, however it seems there are other paths to this outcome, as shown in this video.

In a post on BBC College of Journalism website Paul Egglestone of University of Lancashire’s school of journalism writes:
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Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds

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TheNextWeb produced a good quality video of my keynote at TheNextWeb Conference 2012, shown below.

It doesn’t show all of my full motion graphics presentation, though it frequently cuts to show segments of the visuals through my keynote. I will create and share a full video of my motion graphics presentation along with the audio of me speaking, however as I’m travelling it may take a little while to complete.

Here is a brief overview of the structure of the presentation:
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The future of radio will be a personal mosaic of global and local audio

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On Tuesday I was interviewed as part of a 30 minute panel discussion on ABC Queensland on the future of radio. The podcast of the program is here.

It was a wide ranging discussion, and we covered a lot of territory. At the conclusion of the program, when we were each asked to give our vision for the future of radio, I described what I see radio becoming.

As I pointed out, just as what we have thought of as TV is shifting to multi-channel video, radio is shifting to multi-channel audio, distributed over IP to a multitude of devices, notably mobile phones. However audio will remain an important media channel forever, as there are many reasons we sometimes want just audio without visual accompaniment.
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OPEN: Using crowdsourced legislation to beat SOPA

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SOPA, The Stop Online Piracy Act, is big news in many ways, not least in marking what is likely to be a historical landmark in the battle between traditional media and a now-powerful new media, played out in political influence and the shaping of critical legislation.

One of the most important ways to beat SOPA is to provide a good alternative. The majority of politicians seem to think that online intellectual property rights need better protection, so to kill SOPA requires providing something that can supplant it.

Into this field comes Rep. Darrell Issa, whose involvement in legislation to allow equity crowdfunding I wrote about a few months ago. Issa is essentially seeking to ‘crowdsource’ a bill. Good.is reports:
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The decade ahead for media

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The latest issue of the annual publication Media Trends + Strategy magazine kicks off with a feature article I wrote titled The Decade Ahead for Media. Here is the article:

The decade ahead for media

The future of the media industry as a whole is extraordinarily bright. Alongside the extraordinary rise of social media and a connected world, in the last years we have learned the previously undiscovered depths of the intrinsic hunger humans have for media. As value creation in the global economy increasingly shifts to the flow of information and ideas, and every company can be considered a media organisation, those with the established capabilities, structures, and relationships in media creation and dissemination have an unparalleled opportunity before them.
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Top 10 posts on the future of media

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Another quick selection of my most popular posts from 2011, this time on the topic of the future of media:

1. Predictions for media industry in 2011

Social news curation, crowd sourced journalism, multi-platform distribution, personalized advertising and tablet media will be just some of the key trends shaping the year ahead.
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From news-on-paper to news-on-many-channels

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I’m officially on holidays, but back at home between a family Christmas and beach sojourn and doing quite a few interviews as I go, so I’ll slip in a quick blog post or two. :-)

Yesterday I was interviewed by Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010 about the future (or lack thereof) of newspapers, coming off the news that New York Times has sold its regional newspapers.

They of course wanted me to talk about my Newspaper Extinction Timeline from last year, and I ran through some of the economic reasons why remnant demand for newspapers doesn’t necessarily mean there will continue to be supply.
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