Common Place Book: Journalism in Digital Age (The Transformation of Print Journalism in Social Media Era)

In journalism for years the newspaper was the it source for news even over TV and the Internet, because of in-depth news analysis. The who, what, when, where, has turned into how fast can the industry get news out to the public accurately. That has been the conundrum for print media along with declining sales. With the advent of social media large news papers are no longer the gatekeepers of thorough news coverage in the wave of change from print to digital media.

Print news is no longer venerated as it was by former generations. The public does not have to struggle with the monotony of waiting for their favorite paper to print a trending topic. The news gathering industry as a whole has taken hold to social media use as a vehicle for a change in standards. Now days regular people are breaking local, national, and world news of importance and posting this journalistic information to social media sites such as Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. Amongst the mayheim of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scarily tweeted  after his alledged attack in April, "Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people." Because of social media people have a first hand glimpse into a suspected sociopath's mind without media spin. Also, in April of this year a plane crashed in Utah a passenger recorded the event and posted it on Youtube. The story made the local and news national news a little later. Social media is an aid to the journalism print business where it has field reporters all over the world, and it gives the industry the view of present news from the publics perspective. Unlike print social media is not limited to interviewers or questions and answers, it is in your face, current and free.

Print journalism has dwindled in the digital age. As of 2011 paper sales had been on a decline for 6 years straight from that point The Newspaper Association of America reported. Information on NAA retrieved from Reflection of a Newosaur blog: "the industry’s trade association, reported...that print sales fell by a steep 9.5% in the first three months of the year, dropping industry-wide print sales to $4.7 billion, a level not seen since 1983." This source explains from about 2005 to 2011 the newspaper industry has taken a major hit. This is due impartially to print journalism having to contend with the prevalence of digital media and the ease of access to it. Social media plays a role as news service now days, most consumer are not willing to pay one to two dollars on print any longer when news can be gained free with greater coverage.

"The reason newspaper sales are not recovering is that consumers and marketers are moving ever more aggressively to the digital media. Consumers can find more information, can obtain more choice and can transact business more efficiently on a laptop or a smart phone than they can with even the very best newspaper. Advertisers understand this..." said by Alan B. Mutter in 2011 Reflection of a Newosaur  blog on the decline of print.

Mutter surmised that people are going after information that is given faster and are not compromising to print for news or ad space predominantly. The goods of print has waned and has been at an all time low over the years and people have made a gradual change to social forums for news and ad space. This is the beginning to industry adaptation and eventual normalcy.

Social media sites are social blogs, news transfer, and collection services. Sites such as Twitter have catapulted to a news industry norm for use. Twitter captures trending ideas from industry leaders and celebrities, which instantly makes their thoughts on politics, religion, and sports newsworthy. Every big newspaper in major markets like New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles has a Twitter account along with other social media platforms for news aggregation. News aggregators such as the Associated Press have gone social to open up the market of news gathering with the new avenue possibilities through social media use. The job of social media has grown and it has enlarged harmed print until journalism print groups intergrated it into its everyday process to help serve its consumers.

The landscape of journalism as a whole has taken an revolutionary turn, especially in print. The public now decides what news is, and not major news companies for the most part. It is a must for print news intermediaries to use social media less they get scooped by an everyday citizen, and even if a company does get beat it can still use information for its own interest. Print journalism has latched on to social media big time. In short journalism has sprouted new wings to rise into the horizon of this new digital social media frontier.

Post by: William Bell

Media Specialist, Journalist, and Teacher

Commonplace Book: E-books Attractiveness and Brokenness

The fact of e-books being attractive to publishers and publishing trade does not outweigh the fact of e-books being broken along with e-pub. The conventional mind dictates that a broken thing must be fixed. But, first in order to fix something you must distinguish what are the problems. The problems with e-pub are numerous, but here are just a few and answers to the complications.

The digitization of book has been great as of late to the publishing business, but it has its various challenges. One of them is DRM which stands for digital rights management and also piracy. Does rights for digital works stop people from stealing? Cory Doctorow suggest that digital rights management does nothing and in article Freekonomics Doctorow pays homage to the ideas of a economic scholar and leading publisher Tim O' Reilly. O'Reilly describes this as "piracy's progressive taxation," which means some profit is taken of the top, but for the most there is a wealth of product for money to be made for publisher. As far as piracy it is the concerned the doctorate candidates data shows that pirated materials help in net sales music which can also be translated into dividends for e-books. The suggestion of Doctorow, Michael Jensen to stop piracy is give away some items for free. In most cases Jensen exclaims people police the items that are stolen on the internet and tell company. Even when one problem is met with a possible solution more arise.

One other fiasco with e-books is the sometimes attempting of purchase with ease on certain sites. The problem catergorizing e-books. The are suppose to come with metadata of information about the book and is sometimes not available. An one of the most avoidable problem is various text languages, but is due to competitiveness and a need to innovation in a crowded market. One uniform standard for e-book language is needed to give publishers one choice to format e-book. Open standards such markup text (XML, HTML) should automatically be put up for e-book readability. The open standards are good for engineering ideas, and community standards should be used for e-books. The discrepency lies in proprietary standards such as PDF and Java and that vie for stiff hold on market share for e-books being understood in the companies that produced e-code. To solve this jumble of massive e-text being used about for e-books, it should be an all war like as of late Blu-Ray and Hi-Def DVD. The winner of the DVD battle was Sony Blu-Ray. Now Sony's product is the standard format for high definition digital disc. The same can be afforded to happen in the publishing industry and of course to the victor go the spoils. This will only lighten the load of the brokenness of e-books and e-pub.

In close the attractiveness of the unmature segment of electronic publishing is what keeps the publishers interested. But to mature to full potential it must be nurtured and guided into full adulthood. The future will be only worked out by idealist and publishers willing to fix this teenage outbreak of problems.

Commonplace Book: E-books Attractiveness and Brokenness

As mankinds thought evovles better technologies are birthed. So has the book from humble beginnings written on stone tablets to papyrus fit together for codex books. The evolution of books as time has past is now the e-book. Just a responsible look at historical data shows how the uniformity of books have changed.

Robert Darton states in his book The Case For Books:

Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned
to write...hieroglpyhs...about3200BC, alphabetical
writing to 1000 BC.According to scholars like
Jack Goody, writing was the most important technological
breakthrough in history humanity. It transformed mankind's
relation to past and opened a way for the emergence of the
book as a force in history (pp.21,22).

From the first manner of writings stems the technological past of books. Each era has made jumps to keep writ Holy or otherwise more stable and to have a longer life. E-books has brought about the continuity of technological change for original books to make them more appealing. With e-books there is no crumbling such as with clay tablets and quick aging as with papyrus an earlier scrolls types of writings. E-books not only is the evolved book but has a certain appeal.

Humans gravitate toward new technology overtime. The same with e-books the attractiveness of e-books came about like a late blooming teen. Though the industry of publishing has been peddling e-books for years, but they have just gained popularity with the masses. The industry has shown tremendous growth in e-sales yearly in just about every segment of the business. The late move on e-books has been because publishers have been skeptical of the e-future and holding on to the costly past of p-books Jason Epstein describes in article The New York Review of Books. This somewhat fear has kept publishers from forging through the e-publishing landscape and charting new territory of what is the beauty of e-pub.

The handsomeness in e-publishing is warehousing of books does not exist, which can become a problem when determining the life of book. The portability of the book is paramount especially if a publisher wants to sale to foreign market. A publisher can easily put their book in XML and various other e-formats and send off. For the consumer they can carry thousands of books in e-reader instead of having a few p-copies of books of interest. Publishers can take books already in backlist in transform them into e-books to little or no cost. There are various ways to sale e-books (i.e. chapters, bundled with print, and pages). Last but not least, every publishers dream e-books are sold on a no return basis. These are some reseasons of what make e-books grand to publishers and the industry.

Get ready for endless possiblities and bask in the splendor of the new publishing industry. Lead by a format that may be a bit broken, but seems not to die because of where existence dwells.

from e-ink to e-paper?

Disposable e-paper prototype developed

Sony Reader Introducing Apps for Android and iPhone

"The Sony Reader was one of the first big names in the eBook space, but over the past few years the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and similar eBook devices have grabbed most of the headlines. By launching a Reader app for mobile, Sony might be able to drive up the use of the Sony Reader Store — and also the company’s hardware eBook devices."

http://mobiputing.com/2010/11/sony-reader-apps-coming-to-android-ios/

JEP - Reimaging the university press

Some interesting, possibly relevant essays in the current issue of the JEP on reimagining the university press.

http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org

Random/Discussion

The first two links are the articles from Industry news for Oct. 25. The third link is to an online discussion amongst writers about the E-Book publisher I was researching. The criticisms were interesting, and the publisher responds on occassion.

http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/article/wowio-inc-issued-notice-allowance-for-patent-application-covering-advertising-ebooks/1



http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/45000-libraries-say-no-drm--springer-agrees-.html

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=168026