Innovating Self-Publishing

All semester we examined the ways  traditional media industries were handling the influx of consumer created content. While certainly not the most popular, the publishing industry is not exempt from that conversation. On the way to work, NPR ran a story on Morning Edition that I thought was worthy of sharing!

The complete story, Self-Publishing: No Longer Just a Vanity Project, can be found here.

In the past, self-publishing has been seen by many as a sign that you weren’t good enough to get a real book contract. Recently there has been a growth spurt in the self-publishing industry. A quick Google search will grab 189 million sites. While many publishing companies may fear that due to rights issues and the availability of these publishing outlets, their businesses may be threatened,  Simon & Schuster have a different plan. They just launched Archway Books, an online publishing company. They aren’t actually involved with any editing, publishing, or formatting, but offer a number of different publication packages.  CEO Carolyn Reidy realizes that they must keep up with the changes in the industry, saying “We actually understand that it is a different world than what we do. We want to understand it, and if it is going to … be a threat to our business, we definitely want to understand it and also see how we can turn that to our advantage. And one of the advantages is, it is a great way to find authors, also new genres and new audiences.” Using Archway, they will monitor sales. So rather than feeling threatened by this technology, they are using it to screen audience response to authors and their success.

To me, it looks like a win-win. Budding authors get a chance to show what they’ve got, and the publishers get the opportunity to see an author in action before issuing a contract or taking a financial risk. Rather than using manpower to sort through manuscripts, they can monitor an author’s success using Archway and possibly offer them a contract from there. This kind of technological adoption and strategic business planning is to be applauded!

 

Slowing Down the Misinformation Train

After this week’s unthinkable tragedy in Connecticut, millions of people took to social network sites to gain information, share condolences, express sorrow, and create tributes to the victims. The role of social media news outlets was critical to much of the public’s understanding of what took place. However, this event brought to light social media’s numerous strengths and weaknesses.

As Friday progressed, information and misinformation was strewn about, passed along, shared via social media, and so on and so forth. The material distributed was questionable in nature and frankly the amount of “blind sharing,” I will call it, was entirely frustrating. On Saturday I issued a warning to my Facebook friends, to carefully vet any information they came across before passing it on. And yet, the same people “liking” my plea to be critical consumers of news, were the same people posting and sharing stories that were clearly untrue. The names of the victims were not released until mid to late afternoon on Saturday, yet dozens of images, stories, and posts were circulating well before that time with thousands of “LIKES.” One particularly upsetting story was attributed Morgan Freeman. Allegedly, Freeman attributed the cause of the shooting to “sensationalist media” who glorify shooters by covering their lives so closely. The comments specifically called out CNN and FOX News. On Sunday, a rep for Freeman denied that he made those statements, and since they have been attributed to a “Mark from Vancouver.” You can read about the false statements here. Obviously Morgan Freeman is a highly respected actor, and because he’s so popular, the masses thought nought about passively sharing his thoughts. Whether you agree with the message or not, (I will address that in a moment) the ease of adding an actor’s face to an amateur’s message, thus causing the spread of the message is frightening. When I first read the comments, I was skeptical that he would have been so callous and critical on the day of the tragedy. That being said, I did not share it. But thousands, and I mean hundreds of thousands did. People use these meme and viral messages to align themselves with an argument, and its much easier than formulating your own ideas–all you have to do it click “share.” I couldn’t help but think of the latest State Farm commercial, “State of Disbelief.”

It seems so obvious in this commercial that the girl is the fool. The message implies that the rest of us get it; the Internet is full of fallacy and we shouldn’t believe everything we read there. Yet, hundreds of thousands of people had shared the Morgan Freeman statements within hours of its first posting. It’s obviously not that clear.

Moving on to the message itself. The commentary claimed that “disturbed people” commit these atrocious acts because they are later glorified by the media. While it is true that often after a viscous mass shooting we know more about the perpetrator than the victims, let’s take a second to think about that. When events of this nature occur, our immediate questions are not regarding why the children/movie-goers/mall walkers were in their respective  locations. We know what they were doing. Our questions are more like:

What kind of person could do this?

How long have they been planning this?

Why did they do this?

Et cetera, et cetera.

The answers to each of these questions require the life of the individual to be considered and examined. If our media coverage focused solely on the victims, who are without a doubt worthy of our attention, we would all be left wondering why and how these people died. If the news just told us that nearly 30 people died on Friday and began to elaborate on the lives of said individuals, the public would be outraged.

Some other issues this week? The race to be first beat out the quest to be correct. the article, ”Coverage Rapid, and Often Wrong, in Tragedy’s Early Hours“ from NPR highlights the many inaccuracies started by traditional and social media, that were then spread and shared by the masses. The article quotes Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith saying “Coverage of such crises has not changed, but the way in which reporters construct it and readers and viewers consume it has. Now, he said, the assemblage of the news is playing out in full view and in real-time.” This was especially problematic for Ryan Lanza, brother of shooter Adam Lanza. For several hours on Friday, some of the most legitimate sources of news, CBS, NPR, The Associated Press, and The New York Times  were reporting that Ryan was the shooter, posting his Facebook page on their sites as well as personal information. The rapid jump to conclusions is even worse because as it turns out that he was entirely unassociated with the shooting, yet he was persecuted by the media and the public. The NPR article concludes by saying, “Amid catastrophe and crisis, the media is writing in pencil, erasing it and trying again. So in stories like these, the first draft of history isn’t even a draft. It’s just raw notes, waiting for rewrite.” We HAVE to find some way to slow it down. I understand that sounds like putting rain back in to a cloud, but whether that is critical reading skills or what, the rapid, passive spread of misinformation is just frightening to me. On Friday, Mashable came right out and said what I was thinking in their article “Covering Conn. Shootings: Let’s be Right, not First.” The article began, “Stop. Listen. Think. I honestly believe there are no better words for today and for how we, as journalists, must approach the horrific elementary school shooting in Connecticut. It’s what we did here in Mashable’s news room. We stopped, collected and decided on how we could tell this story in a way that might offer insight, maybe even comfort, to our readers.” Mashable  deliberately did not report about Ryan Lanza, although they did hear his name. They avoided topics about gun control and mental health policy, both of which were only speculation at the time! “What’s crystal clear is that, in these situations, whatever information is put out there will instantly grow legs and run off on its own. Whoever reports the misinformation has absolutely no control over what happens next. They can’t run around the neighborhood and grab the newspapers off newsstands, though they often act as if they could.”

I’m not sure if the answer is education, regulation, or reformation, or maybe some combination of the three. What is certain is that while the internet has provided an amazing platform for the spread of information and ideas, we cannot ignore its shortfalls. Instead of running around the next day just updating stories and ignoring the millions of people who were misled and still sharing that misinformation, journalism has to find a new, different way to share their stories and fix the mass confusion that occurs as a result of their competitive nature.

From Soloist to Director

In the final reading for this class, Annet Aris presents the best analogy thus far for describing the shifting nature of media work. The role of content creator, she states, is changing from a “star musician” producing (performing) pieces of content to a “director” aggregating and organizing content. The idea that you can write well and publish your article is not enough. You need to understand how to include graphics, video, sound, and make all of that compatible with many different media platforms. Continuing the theme of music, she suggests that since content creation is no longer a one-way street, the role of a DJ, recycling and re-purposing information to create a new product, could be used.

We’ve talked in class before about the need to know a great deal of different skills upon entering the workforce and  then to continue learning. But for me, the themes throughout this course and this reading specifically seem to boil down to this: This dynamic industry is in need of some serious problem-solvers.  That is not to suggest that any particular industry is laden with problems, but rather to say the changes in society, technology, communication, etc. prescribe everything else must change with them. The industries need people not to fret that the methods look different than they have in the past or freak out about job security, but to ask serious questions about the best ways to share information and then get to work doing that. This industry needs critical thinkers who can innovate and articulate, discover and distribute, and adapt, adapt, adapt.  These ideas of flux, instability, and precarity are no longer threatening to me. I think if anything, they are a challenge; a sort-of “whattya-got?” push in the chest. The media, specifically news media, are not going anywhere. We, as socialized beings, will always want to know what is “going on.” As politics and social citizenry collide, there will always be a lot to talk about. In addition, the platforms to do this “talking” are only growing by the day. Despite Deuze’s best effort to freak us out and inform us that every media industry everywhere is dying, we know better!

Let’s talk about definitions and order. In our postmodern world, the barriers of all kinds of previously well-defined entities are crossing and blurring. For example, the definition of “family,” “small business,” or even “media” aren’t anything close to what they represented fifty years ago. Yet, while we embrace change and progress, we still seem to be obsessed with ordering and naming the unorderable and unnameable.  The final chapter in Deuze’s book, Media Work ,  stresses the need “to make sense of media work.” It seems to me that any efforts to characterize or classify the current state of media will fail and leave the classifier more anxious than he or she was to begin with. If only because we’re trying to fit our current system into the definitions of the past. I know that we fear chaos, and writing in and of itself requires order, but we will continue to be unsuccessful and anxious if we don’t realize that we’re putting a square peg into a round hole. It’s not the same. It’s not going to be the same. We need to start building a square hole and stop banging the proverbial wooden blocks.

And just to show how severe and innate our obsession with defining is, scroll back to the top and see how excited I was that we could compare content creators to “directors” now. Geez.

The moral at the end of this story/class is that change is evident. Jobs, technologies, processes, standards, styles, and people, will continue to develop (which is definitely a good thing) and what we must do is not freak out that what we thought we knew is no longer relevant, but get to work learning what we will need to respond to all of the dynamism. For me, it means the work is never done, and the learning should never stop. That’s pretty cool

So finally, the semester is almost done. After this blog post, there is only a paper left. Naturally, I chose to write about changes within the field of journalism and the industry’s response to those changes.

 

We the Members of Contradicting Communities

The second article this week was Between the Nation and the Profession: Journalists as Members of Contradicting Communities by Eyal Zandberg & Motti Neiger. It was fascinating, and addressed a number of interesting predicaments journalists, and people in general, can face while navigating the rapids of multiple, public identities. The article examined the role of journalists caught in between two worlds: their professional community and their national community.  It suggests that in times of national crisis or conflicts, journalists can find themselves torn between “the professional desire for objectivity and the national desire for solidarity.” Their findings, in a study of Israeli news coverage, show that ” their [journalists']belonging to the national community overpowers their membership in the professional one.”

In some ways this isn’t surprising to me. I don’t think it should be. In September of 2001, I was a freshman in high school; old enough to know what had happened, but certainly not old enough to understand the implications. Curious as to how American journalists faced this at the time, I found this article on FAIR, titled Patriotism & Censorship.  It begins: “War fever in the wake of the September 11 attacks has led to a wave of self-censorship as well as government pressure on the media. With American flags adorning networks’ on-screen logos, journalists are feeling rising pressure to exercise “patriotic” news judgment, while even mild criticism of the military, George W. Bush and U.S. foreign policy are coming to seem taboo.” The general gist of the article goes on to offer examples of American media personalities and journalists who were silenced, and those who were happy to silence themselves. Isn’t it interesting that while our country was founded upon a notion of free expression, so often love of that country is used to suppress such expression? Zandberg & Neiger say that “the luxury of the detachment offered by the ideology of “objectivity”, “neutrality”, and “balance” …is reserved for reporting other people’s troubles, not one’s own.” But then, do we consider outsiders or third parties, credible? Usually, no.

The original article, Between the Nation, explains that it only took a few days for the journalists to return to their professional standards and incorporate the “other side” back into their reporting, and shift from a national-ethnic frame to a civic frame. This transition, called “paradigm repair” by the authors, suggests a need to see journalists’ identities as dynamic, not fixed and clear, but moving constantly between the “professional and national hegemonic community.” But I ask, are any of our identities entirely separate of each other? Is that even possible? In a time when we are bringing work home and taking home to work, how can we be expected to keep the two individual ideologies separate, when everything else calls for them to be connected. We spend millions upon millions of dollars on education, teaching students to think, and to do so critically. Then when they become adults, we ask them to shut up and do their jobs.

I think, sometimes, our need to avoid offending or remaining objective asks too much of the individual.

*The reporter should cover the national tragedy and not feel any allegiance or partiality to her wounded country?

*The teacher should instruct and guide but never offer their own opinion for fear of undue influence?

*The business owner should avoid backing a political candidate, because they may alienate potential customers?

In the article, the journalists were concerned about appearing objective, neutral, balanced to their peers and bosses. However,  it seems to me that in our country, being outright biased is more socially acceptable than claiming to be neutral, balanced, and/or objective and then presenting the country, leadership, etc., in a negative light. THAT , I think, is most interesting. In America, I think writing a news article, and having it labeled “leftist” or “rightist” isn’t nearly as damning as being labeled “anti-American.” What do make of our hyper-nationalism, which suggests that to criticize our country or offer anything but undying support for policies/leadership/etc. is less acceptable than to come right out and say, “I’m a Rep./Ind./Dem./whatever, and this is what I think”?  Is this a good thing?

At the same time our professional lives are asking us to “mute” our beliefs and opinions, we have been handed personal soapbox platforms: social media outlets. Just as I sit here expressing all of my thoughts and opinions, the internet has provided numerous opportunities for the exchange of information.   We are able to cultivate digital confidence as we sit behind our screens and voice opinions we might not otherwise have shared. Interesting paradox: half of our society is begging us to sit down and shut up, the other half says “Here you go, say what you want. Be yourself. Find others who think like you and share ideas. ” Talk about postmodernism running rampant! Could all of this public suppression have anything to do with our obsession with new media? Here (in new media), we are free to create digital communities and be self-expressive. It almost seems like contemporary culture is driving us to our solitary places to interact safely behind our avatars with all of our new-found digital confidence, rather than engage in traditional modes of communication.

Between the Nation  concludes by offering this: “Journalists cannot perceive reality only from a distant, professional point of view  they are always members of their cultural and national communities.” Aren’t we all? How can we apply this in order to see expressions of our cultural and national  identities in the public sphere in new ways?

 

Merging Millennials and Convergence Culture

The second part of this week’s reading assignment, Life’s a Pitch: Managing the Self in New Media Work by Rosalind Gill, offered pretty interesting insights about the work of new media, by the workers themselves. The dynamic nature of this industry has been fodder for much contemplation and speculation. It occurred to me while reading this that some of the precariousness and insecurity must indeed be exacerbated by the fundamental characteristics of the millennial generation, to which I belong. Millennials, are considered to be those born after 1980, thus “coming of age” in the new millennium. Much like the Greatest Generation, The Baby Boomers, & the Generation X-ers, the Millennials have distinct character traits, which are a result of the time period in which they grew up, and parenting & educational trends.   Bruce Mayhew Consulting offers strategic marketing and communication training for businesses. Their website offers hiring/managing advice for each generation and compares and contrasts the character traits of each. The following are summaries of their classifications.

*Millennials grew up in a culturally diverse school and play environment, are tech-saavy, enthusiastic, self-centered, confident, well-networked, and achievement oriented.

*Millennials are referred to as the “Everybody Gets a Trophy” generation. Their parents told them they can do anything and were cautious to teach them not to leave any one out. They feel that their ideas and opinions should be heard and generally feel that they are “great,” “awesome,” or “fantastic.” (Substitute any positive feedback given to a child, and they own it.)

*Millennials’ parents introduced them to numerous well-structured academic and social activities, thus creating a custom of busy-ness, as well as a need for variety and challenge.

* Millennials were given frequent, positive feedback, encouraged to make mistakes and learn from them, and numerous opportunities to “get it right.” As a result, they function best when they are allowed to mess up. They want to be told they are doing a great job and on the right track.

*Millennials were often part of “teams.” As a result, they require mentoring and teaching, and given the opportunity will ask questions if they are unsure.

*Millennials were encouraged to be creative and “think outside the box.” They work best when given clear expectations but are allowed to complete the task in their own way. They are learning-oriented, and will be quick to seek out more information of they do not understand.

*Millennials are loyal. When they feel their work is socially important, and their careers needs are being met, they will not job hop.

Obviously, this list is not all-inclusive and variations occur. But as a whole, these statements are fairly representative of Millennials. It is easy to see that many of these character traits move in direct opposition to the “liquid” nature of today’s media word environment. When Gill interviewed new media workers, the 10 key features were: love of the work, entrepreneurialism, insecure work, low pay, long hours, keeping up, DIY learning, informality, exclusions and inequalities, & no future.

Here’s another interesting look at Millennials. (Thank you Alex!)

In another way though, I think the media portrayals of creative work,  that Gill describes as “trendy warehouses” in “cultural quarters” of a city, where the setting is informal, and the people are cool, can attract Millennials. The notion of “doing what you love” has always been related to me as a way to avoid becoming a sell-out and doing something that matters. So if employers can communicate the Millennials will be doing good, important work, I think they will have us– hook, line, and sinker.

Much of the insecurity is worsened by the fact that we’ve been told all our lives that we can “do anything we put our minds to” and that we’re “awesome.” Now, that we’re entering the work force that mindset has changed drastically. The emphasis on education over experience speaks to me as well. I cannot help but think of all of the new degrees, programs, and training that have been developed in the past two decades.  In the past, an education degree was just that. Now, an education degree could be Math Grades 6-12 or Pre- K ESE. Twenty years ago, a business major had to know some accounting, marketing, advertising, and managing. Now, each of those is a separate degree. The work force is asking us to be able to do more, while our degrees are becoming more specific. Gill also discusses the focus on theory in education over practical application and I see that across so many disciplines. Theory is important as it teaches you how to think about the world, and the need for critical thinkers will never abate. But in a time where the speed of sound is slow, an employer often finds the experienced worker more valuable than the educated one. I think we’re at a critical point for education, because we cannot suggest that education diminishes your capability to find work, but in many ways it does.

Gill closes her article with the all familiar call to networking. Luckily for us Millennials, we know how. We’re comfortable with social media and talking.  Like Bruce Mayhew suggested, we are confident and enthusiastic, so we at least have that going for us.

Some interesting articles for further reading on this subject–

Time Magazine: Why Do We Discount the Career Achievements of the Young?

Forbes:  Why Millennial Workers Aren’t As Useful As You Thought

Pew Center: The Millennials. Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

In the news…

Here, are some quick articles I came across this week, that fall in line with all that we’ve been talking about.

First, is a story from Kansas. A court ordered the Topeka-Capital Journal to reveal the identity of an online commenter. You can find the entire article here. One of the comments on coverage of an ongoing murder trial seemed to know information about what was being discussed by the jury. The prosecution and the judge were concerned that it was a member of the jury posting about the case. Earlier in the semester we talked about the legal issues with citizen journalism, and this highlights some of those. As a result of the subpoena, the comment has been taken down from the site. The comments underneath the article (about the subpoena) are most fascinating. The majority I saw seemed to feel that the commentator’s right to free speech has been violated. When in fact, the issue is with anonymous free speech. Interesting.

Second, is a study from the Pew Center that looks at information technology in the education field. Teachers were polled and a here are the quick stats:

• Virtually all (99%) AP and NWP teachers in this study agree with the notion that “the internet enables students to access a wider range of resources than would otherwise be available,” and 65% agree that “the internet makes today’s students more self-sufficient researchers.”
• At the same time, 76% of teachers surveyed “strongly agree” with the assertion that internet search engines have conditioned students to expect to be able to find information quickly and easily.
• Large majorities also agree with the notion that the amount of information available online today is overwhelming to most students (83%) and that today’s digital technologies discourage students from using a wide range of sources when conducting research (71%).
• Fewer teachers, but still a majority of this sample (60%), agree with the assertion that today’s technologies make it harder for students to find credible sources of information.
• Given these concerns, it is not surprising that 47% of these teachers strongly agree and another 44% somewhat believe that courses and content focusing on digital literacy should be incorporated into every school’s curriculum.

You can read the rest here. The sheer amount of information and that fact that there is not a “truth filter” makes discerning information difficult for most Americans, but now we see teaching validity and reliability become all the more important. Sounds like the need for a new “brand” of content has been established!

Finally, this article from Good.is, Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: The Danger of Avoiding Tough News, discusses a survey done among Americans looking at “ignorance.” We have talked extensively about the increase in media outlets, and therefore amount of content. An area that is of interest to me is the content, of the content. The appearance of news has changed in really drastic ways, leaving the public to sort through and decide what is real, important, etc. The study referred to in the article suggests that people avoid “hard news” because, “ignorance is a lovely state to be in—or so the ignorant believe—and those blissfully unaware of the problems related to energy, environmental, and economic issues wish to remain that way.” Pretty scary. An interesting read…

Alleged Evolution through Increased Fragmentation

Some things I “learned” from these readings that I’ve heard before:

1. Film is dying.

2. Innovation in necessary.

3. Networking is important.

4. Power struggles exist between “creatives” and “suits.”

5. Managing creativity is increasingly difficult.

I disagree with #1– all the rest can stay. Deuze (Ch. 6) talks about innovating television and film to include UGC (user-generated content) and allow for users to co-create, whether that be with alternate endings or customization of the presentation somehow. Initially when I read this, I thought “Wow! I have never considered what it would be like to dictate how I think Law & Order: SVU should end. (Obviously, Olivia should always prevail!) Then I imagined some kind of super-advanced device, a la The Jetsons, that would allow me to control the television in new and amazing ways, oh wait…and then the world (insert evil laugh, here). I’ll bet didn’t know that for about $50, your TV can have super powers now, using a remote that looks like an old Nintendo controller… here. This device will revolutionize your life. Now, if the phone rings or you want to surf the internet or order dinner or whatever, you don’t even have to stand up! You can do it all in front of your TV! (insert sarcasm).

But then, I began to think about all of the other ways we (humans) customize our media content, and how in the past I’ve considered, and even stated,  that this dilutes our “experience” of the world around us. If this is to be the case, that we all dictate what we read, listen to, watch, smell, etc., and filter out everything else that is not of immediate interest or doesn’t reaffirm our own ideals, we should all immediately invest in large, plastic bubbles and promptly insert ourselves in them permanently. So that we never, ever come into contact with anything other than our “own-ness.” (Yep, that’s a word) See like this…doesn’t life look fun?

 

Here, in our plastic bubbles, we aren’t forced to come into contact with “icky” ideas presented by other people. We are free to be ourselves, and think only what we think, and see only what we see. Doesn’t that sound great, I mean absurd?

Our fascination with customization and fragmentation only drives us to our respective poles. To me, media is about the creation, production, and distribution of ideas. Not just our ideas, but the ideas of others, including the crazies and the outliers. That is how we learn and become critical thinkers; we have to sort through the “mess” that is out there.

Questions: Is there just too much information out there now that we need some intervening force other than our brains to sort it out for us? Is our addiction to “customization” connected to our need for speed, i.e. convenience or efficiency? Why are we content to stop thinking?

For those in the advertising business, it’s a dream come true. Demographics and interests come together in a whole new level. But in the same ways that text messages have weakened interpersonal communication skills, grammar, handwriting, etc., what will this do? I feel the pressure to survive and evolve  in a competitive industry are corralling media innovators into directions that are antithetical to survival and evolution.

A quick word on entrepreneurs: Charles Davis begins Ch. 14 “New Firms in the Screen-Based Media Industry: Start-ups, Self-Employment, and Standing Reserve” by offering this quote: “Self employment may be seen either as a survival strategy for those who cannot find any other means of earning an income or as evidence of entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to be one’s own boss.”

I liken this to the oldie but goodie…”Those who can, do…Those who cannot, teach” Isn’t it really saying the same thing? I will divulge that I’m not partial here, both as the daughter of an entrepreneur and a former teacher, both of these ideas seem to negate the raw talent, passion, and stick-to-it-ive-ness that both fields require. I just wanted to note that I believe the order in which these ideas were presented is questionable.