Before I finished reading the first paragraph of this latest entry on the American Press Institute Media Center’s morph blog, I knew who’d penned it: Nashville blogger Terry Heaton, who’s trying to drag TV stations into the 21st century.
Terry writes:
J.D. Lasica, author of Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation, calls the citizens media movement the “personal media revolution.” I’ve adopted the term, because I think it’s more fitting as regards what’s happening in our culture today. Besides, “citizens media” sounds like it was coined by the Bolsheviks.
I also like it because putting the personal against the professional helps shine a light on one of the great mysteries of our time — why professional media people are so completely ignoring the technologies and concepts that are driving the revolution. …
Consider how this has evolved in the television newsgathering process. Modeled after the only thing available, Hollywood’s single camera film style, early TV crews included a specialist reporter, a specialist field producer, a specialist camera operator, a specialist sound operator, and any other specialist that was required. While technology is now able to take the place of nearly every specialist, the industry still hasn’t fully accepted the disruptive innovations. …
In the past year, we’ve witnessed numerous journalistic scoops compliments of a world that professional journalists abhor — the blogosphere. The more famous cases involved the exploding of certain visible news pedestals, such as the one formerly assigned to Dan Rather, but throughout the land, thousands of local issues and stories are being covered by communities springing up within the world of the blog. This is due to Lasica’s “personal media revolution,” and professional news organizations need to do more than simply pay attention. We need to embrace and master the technologies they’re using. …
I’ll be getting together to compare notes with Terry when he heads to the Bay Area in early June. Exciting times ahead in the realm of personal broadcasting, now that the barriers to entry have all but disappeared.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply