Advice: stop moaning, go digital
The seventh Austin Forum on journalism in the Americas began today in Austin, Texas with an opening speech by Rosental Calmon Alves, director of the Knight Centre for Journalism at the University of Texas, and one of the forum organisers.
Editor's corner
By Marius Dragomir
- Webb on the web (Photo: Marius Dragomir)
Alves spoke about the changes brought about new technologies, stressing that for the first time in the history of the media, the listener / consumer / reader has become a producer, a change that many traditional media have failed or are slow in recognising and, more than that, in monetising.
With some 50 participants from across Latin America as well as the USA, and supported by the Open Society Media Program, this year’s Austin Forum broaches topics related to digital technologies and their impact on journalism and democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Unlike other of the zillion conferences on this topic, however, the Austin event is imbued with optimism. While media businesses worldwide moan about losing money as new platforms are totally unable to generate enough fresh cash, Alves says that the changes triggered by technology, having to do with how we receive and consume media, how we communicate, are all part of a new era, which offers journalism huge opportunities.
The morning session was filled by Amy Webb, a former Newsweek and Wall Street Journal journalist, now heading the Webbmedia Group, an international digital consultancy that trains participants, mostly from Latin America, in boosting their online readership.
- Alves showing the digital beauty (Photo: Marius Dragomir)
Webb has talked mostly about the value of social networking. She said that large social networks such as Facebook or Twitter (which by the way are losing substantial money) should be studied by journalists and media and be a source of inspiration when they build their own social communities.
The Huffington Post, the US liberal news server mothered by columnist Arianna Huffington, Facebook and the video site YouTube all have in common the fact that they “know specifically their audience and that they know this audience is changing very fast,” Webb said. She argued that we have to get rid of the misconception that new technologies are a playground for teenagers. The average tweeter is, she claimed, almost 40 year old.
Later sessions of the Forum will tackle the impact of new technologies on investigative journalism, relations between government and technology in Colombia, the marriage of old and new models on the internet, and the impact of new technology on video production.
