New Media is not what you think it is

Posted by Ryan Jerz 12/22/2008. Permalink | Shortlink | Tweet it!

As just about all of the people who read this will know, I fashion myself somewhat knowledgeable on the idea of New Media. Whether that’s something you agree with or not is beside the point. The point is that I think it’s true, so I spend time thinking about it, discussing it, working in it, and trying to figure out what the answer to the grand question of it is.

The interest in this stuff was both enhanced and refined during my time in graduate school. The program I was in fashioned itself as a new media think tank, where we would attempt to come up with ideas that shifted the thinking in general on “the media” and build tools that helped shape news coverage in a new way and redefine what it meant to be a journalist (or, at least, refocus the efforts of journalists back on what was perceived as mattering).

At the same time, social networking sites were absolutely blowing up. I remember registering for classes and waiting impatiently for my unr.edu email address to be activated so I could sign up for Facebook. At the time, it was still limited to .edu email addresses, so in order to get in, you had to have one. Twitter hadn’t been launched publicly yet, and was still a year away from the SxSW blowup. Both of those sites/tools are now embedded in the minds of the people I talk with daily as two incredibly important things in “new media.” And the thing is, they’re probably right. Both of those examples qualify as new media, and they are playing important roles in the facilitation of all kinds of new things.

Then you look at the topics we covered in grad school. We talked about new media as in new journalism. The program was even billed as Journalism 2.0 due to its goal of bringing journalism together with Web 2.0 technology, which, coincidentally or not, is still a tough thing to define. The person I believe is responsible for calling what we set out to do Journalism 2.0 was Ed Lenert. Ed was always in tune with some of the coolest technology that was being developed, and was interested in how it could be used in what we were doing. He was always a really interesting guy to talk to about emerging online technology and he pushed groups of us to develop our own technologies that could be used in the new journalism we hoped would emerge. One example of this is a project I helped develop in the early stages called Promise Tahoe. It was a derivative of Pledgebank but geared toward enabling residents of Lake Tahoe and visitors to the area to promise they’d accomplish something environmental in nature. My project was a social network analysis of business and community organizations in the Tahoe area (and before you assume anything, no, it was not about Twitter—it was a social network analysis based on the principles of social capital laid out in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone). The social network analysis was a tool that could be used by journalists to find new and unique connections among the players in a social and political system, and through those connections new stories might emerge surrounding the civic governance of a community.

The group of people I spent the year of that program with were mostly media professionals—reporters, television news producers, freelancers, etc. The program was sponsored by the likes of the Reno Gazette-Journal, Sunbelt Communications, and Swift Communicatons. I, and a couple others, were pretty new to the business of journalism. But those pros were people who knew they were “the media” and when the term “new media” was tossed around, they took it to mean new forms of doing journalism. Without a doubt, that was also the intention of the school itself. We were there to figure out new ways for the media to work.

That definition of new media is quite different to the internet, it seems. Since I took my multimedia skills to marketing the state of Nevada, I have found that just about everyone in this business takes “new media” to mean new forms of media. Have a podcast? You’re all about new media. Shoot video for your blog? New media. It’s really different. Even some of the people that were brought in to speak to us during school—a Pulitzer Prize winner, specifically—didn’t get the distinction. He touted multimedia as “new,” mostly, I think, because it was new to him.

I have attended the New Media Expo, which was essentially a conference about making and monetizing a killer podcast. No mention at all of “the media.” It’s almost as if the thought never occurred to anyone in this realm that there is an entire industry that is using the same terminology to describe something completely different.

What I get out of this is that anytime someone comes selling “new media” to me, my company, or anyone else, a clear definition of what they consider new media better be really emphasized. Being the guy in charge of new media at work more or less makes me be the one who has to define it, so I tend to stick with what qualifies as new media in the marketing realm. It’s podcasting, video, social—anything that was once called multimedia. But I hold a serious and soft spot in my heart for the new forms of journalism. Heck, it changed dramatically the way I run this site and how I think of the web itself. If I didn’t hold that spot, I’d be betraying what I once stood for so strongly.

Now, the landscape is changing once again. Locally, a new organization, the unfortunately-named (for reasons not-quite-related to this post) Nevada New Media Association, has popped up hoping to capture everyone interested in this stuff. The organization was started by Ed Lenert and Tracy Viselli. One of the first tasks of the group, thankfully, is to define what they’re talking about when they say new media. The group can take any number of turns in shaping the definition. The board consists of another of my graduate school professors, Donica Mensing; the managing editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal, Beryl Love; a technology lawyer, Tim Casey; and a marketing guy, Dave Archer. Along with Viselli, who has insisted in the past (here and here) that she is not a journalist, it seems pretty split down the middle.

I’m obviously running on assumptions of how people will want to define things here. Hopefully my assumptions are wrong and this group will come together on a definition that works for everyone. It appears they already have tried to shape the definition (who “I” in that post is I have no idea, considering there are no authors listed). There can certainly be a convergence of new journalism and new forms of media. I think that much should be assumed. The technology that’s available, for free, to everyone is so cool and easy to use in these new ways of doing journalism that you should be using them if you have any ideas of changing how these things work.

Aside from that group, we have the New Media Crusaders. It’s basically a bunch of marketing people who want to bounce ideas off of one another in a think tank sort of way (I’m one of the group’s admins). When that began a few months back, the question at the heart of this post came to me. So I asked it. Several of us in that group had just attended the New Media Expo, and I could see that the term was pretty convoluted. The definition that was more or less agreed upon there is a kind of mashup of technology and journalism, so that’s good.

I think what it comes down to is that there are some serious differences in how people define New Media. Any group putting that in their name is placing an importance on their definition of it, and that definition is going to be the crucial point from which that group operates. in the few weeks that the Nevada New Media Association has been around, I have seen people taking issue with what they’re presenting as the point of their summit. It’s starting to feel a little bit like a discussion on religion to me. One side believes that it’s always one way, and the other side doesn’t think that one way even exists. It’s not quite that hard core, but I hope you see what I mean.

I hope the Nevada New Media Association can figure out their definition through a serious discussion that covers it all and discounts nothing. From the looks of the people on their advisory board, they should be able to pull that off.

Ryan JerzRyan Jerz is an all-around good guy who shoots photos and video, builds websites, and works in athletics at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received a Masters Degree in 2007 from the University of Nevada, Reno's Reynolds School of Journalism.

Comments

Wolfy wrote:

I don’t like lumping in journalism into it. Sure the end result is journalism. But for most of us it’s about storytelling. I don’t see journalism and storytelling as the same thing.

Further i see groups like the board for the NNMA (newspaper, lawyer, school, professional association, etc) as seeking to institutionalize new media. When as you and i have discussed before, what needs to happen is a push back towards personalizing new media.

That and there’s a big gap between the haves and have-nots. A lot of people don’t see through the WHY to get to the HOW. And the why is where the interest is for me.

-M

Dec 23, 07:02 AM

Ryan Jerz wrote:

I think journalism is a huge part of what’s driving it. I think another thing that I failed to address here is that journalism is changed from what you’re considering the “institution.” I see your point about law and a newspaper being involved, but one thing I can say about the Journalism School is that they are working on figuring out what the new definition of journalism is.

I happen to think that everything we all are doing is journalism, so I am happy to lump it in there. That part is done, as far as I’m concerned. Where the battle is going to be fought, so to speak, is what people consider journalism. Some people still want it to have some lofty ideal attached, and I simply think that needs to go away fast. Nothing qualifies anyone for doing journalism, except the ability to tell people what they saw.

Dec 23, 03:20 PM

Laurel Busch wrote:

I’ve wanted to respond to this since you posted it, but it’s a complex issue and I wanted to give it some thought first.

I think in one word my reaction would be “impatience.” After spending 6 years editing academic journal articles, I just don’t have any patience for people who want to stay in one place arguing about definitions. They never change each other’s minds, they never teach or learn anything new and they never actually do anything.

Yes, in some situations “a clear definition of what they consider new media better be really emphasized.” Definitely. But who cares if one term has different meanings to different people? If the definition in a specific situation isn’t obvious, it shouldn’t take long to clarify what is meant and proceed.

I just don’t understand why you would care if some people think “new media” just means “new technology” or how the Northern Nevada New Media project defines it or will define it. If the term “new media” has lost its meaning (or the meaning you have for it), why not coin a new term that is unique to “new ways of doing journalism”?

But why do “new ways of doing journalism” require a special term anyway? I would expect journalists to adopt every new way to communicate without even thinking about it, much less naming what they’re doing. (Actually, I’m surprised to learn of newspaper reporters’ resistance to blogging and bloggers, but that’s another topic.)

Dec 28, 08:23 PM

Ryan Jerz wrote:

I think a definition is needed for this summit and association specifically because otherwise it would be a gigantic waste of time. If people speaking and attending all have different ideas about what they’re there to see, it would be really hard to advance anything because they’ll be seeing things they don’t expect. So yes, when the purpose is to get together and think about things and try to come up with a better way of doing things, you’d better at least be on the same page about what you’re trying to improve.

Personally, I don’t care what it’s called. But when a group chooses the name “New Media” a few things come to mind. New Media is a buzzword, and a dumb one at that. It’s dumb precisely because it has so many meanings. Since it’s a buzzword, it makes the organization sound like a coordinated group of spammers and hacks. Do a quick search of people who use “new media” in their descriptions. They’re just about all spammers and hacks. I don’t think these guys are, but choosing that name betrays a lack of clear thought (as I detailed above) about it, and maybe a focus on trying to make sure everything is optimized for search engines or something. Again, dumb.

I agree that journalists should be trying all these new things out. I think that locally there are several who are doing that. There are also plenty that are not, and will not. As with everything, there is plenty of room for improvement, and I have done what I could in the past to pass along ideas because I want this stuff to work. It will take a little time.

What drives me nuts is that the journalism school is sponsoring something that seems so hastily thrown together and clearly lacks the kind of forethought that we were encouraged to use before ever venturing into something like this. Simply put, I have no idea how this will turn out. But the name alone tells me they are in over their heads on all of it.

Back to your point about why people argue about stuff like this. I think it’s all part of the process. If you didn’t bring up grievances, you might never get the NEXT thing to include your points. Nobody is going to solve all the world’s problems in one sitting at the New Media Summit. But in discussing everything they see right and wrong in journalism and technology, they might just figure out the next step and include the important points made along the way. I applaud it being attempted, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t expect anything “new” to come out of it.

Dec 30, 11:49 AM

Bob wrote:

They can call it a “Bluetooth-enable sex orgy” for all I care. Definitions aren’t that important to me. The summit will likely help flesh out the definition. I think there’s a general understanding of what new media is, and this group deserves credit for creating this effort, despite some obvious reservations already evident.

Like:

The early indications are that this summit’s organization has been flaky, self-promoting, sanctimonious (as in not linking to Nevada new media efforts despite their omnipresence and despite claiming to want to bolster new media in Nevada), founded by people who have little interaction — Donica Mensing would be the exception — with those of us involved with social media efforts in Nevada, and is likely to be based on arbitrary decision making processes.

Nevertheless, the jury’s out until it happens so I reserve more judgment until then. And kudos to the group for putting it on. It should be interesting.

-Bob

Dec 30, 02:37 PM

Laurel Busch wrote:

The website certainly seems to have been thrown together hastily.

Dec 30, 08:47 PM

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