E-Media Tidbits

If you're wondering what the next generation of media consumers will want, check out the new report from the Digital Youth Project -- an extensive three-year U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media.

This project was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and conducted by a team of 28 researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley. They interviewed more than 800 teens and their parents, individually and in groups. They also asked the teens to keep diaries of what they did online and when. And they observed the teens on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube for more than 5000 hours.

Some highlights from the report...

Tidbits reader Dow Smith, associate professor of journalism at Siena College, asks:

"After 13 years as a 'broadcast' journalism professor, I retired and am now setting up a program at Siena College near Albany. ...Here I can just start from scratch. Siena has only one print journalism course so it might be a little easier [than overhauling a more extensive program].

"We are looking at an interdisciplinary major that would combine courses from English (journalism), creative arts (graphic design) computer science (multimedia), marketing and management (e-commerce), sociology (TV and popular culture), and four 'broadcast journalism' courses I'm teaching.

"Do you or your readers have any experience or knowledge of such an approach? Are there any schools taking this interdisciplinary approach?"

Tidbits contributors Michelle Ferrier and Kim Pearson  offer their perspective...

"Welcome to Now" beckoned the synthesized female voice that accompanies Sprint's "Now" widget. This Flash-based mobile Web portal features a compendium of useful and trivial information, entertainment and diversions -- all arranged in rectangular modules arranged around a small square containing a fetching game of Pong.

Designed by the Goodby Silverstein ad agency to generate a buzz around Sprint's mobile broadband network, Now has some serious limitations as a widget -- it's not totally customizable. However, the site's information design and portability have me considering whether this could another step in the emergence of a new design paradigm business model for news...

Today Jennifer Saba reports on an Editor & Publisher blog that she received the following e-mail from American Press Institute associate director Mark Mulholland:

"Because no reportable consensus was reached at last week's 'API Summit on Saving An Industry In Crisis', today's press conference call originally scheduled for 11 a.m. EST has been canceled.

"The summit conference was a constructive dialog among senior industry leaders, serving as a catalyst for continuing conversation and efforts at reversing declining revenue and profit trends. As progress toward those goals is made, additional information will be provided.

...Huh?...

"The dam is leaking all over the place," writes Roland Soong of East South West North (ESWN) in a thoughtful analysis of the changes China's Internet has faced over the past five years. Last weekend, China's most important bloggers gathered in the South-Chinese city of Guangzhou at the 2008 Chinese Blogger Conference. Soong was not able to deliver his speech due to a family emergency, but fortunately found time to write it down...

Today's mini-Tidbits include hiring efforts at Talking Points Memo, an intriguing media conference, and an unusual resource that might help your flu season reporting...

On Nov. 11 in Slate, author and journalist Ron Rosenbaum attacked maverick media futurist Jeff Jarvis, asking: Is Jeff Jarvis gloating too much about the death of print?

Central to Rosenbaum's thesis is the notion that Jarvis has become "increasingly heartless" about the many decent journalists "who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry." Rosenbaum continues: "Not only does he blame the victims, he denies them the right to consider themselves victims. They deserve their miserable fate -- and if they don't know it, he'll tell them why at great length. Sometimes it sounds as if he's virtually dancing on their graves."

In my opinion, Jarvis is making a concrete attempt to help brainstorm new business models for news. However, embryonic new business models for news probably won't make many journalists happy -- and that seems to be at the heart of this conflict...