Nicisms

Is mobile, hyper-local, location-based news content the way to save mainstream media in the USA?

I think it might be. I have been watching closely over the past few months as newspaper after newspaper has fallen away in the US. It’s a very scary and very sad situation that American media finds itself in. Resistance to change over the past few years has positioned many papers in a dire situation where it’s a matter of shit or get off the pot. And many are shitting themselves.

Boston Globe is a one example that I have been watching withe extreme interest. Boston.com is a great resource that has not been used effectively enough to pull Boston Globe out of financial trouble.

The resistance to change coupled with a severe drop in advertising and circulation (with thanks to a recession and online media emerging as a force in the media industry) has left the Boston Globe almost crippled. Many people are set to lose jobs and Boston, the city, is set to lose it’s competitive media market. If Boston Globe closes down the city of Boston will be left with a single daily newspaper. This defeats the purpose of mainstream media acting as a democratic watchdog or fourth estate. With one media organisation remaining things are not looking good.

Enter hyper-local, location-based news content fed to mobile phones produced by hyper-local citizen media producers who put content up via cellphones on to hyper-local portals.

This is what Martin Langeveld of Nieman Journalism Lab had to say on the topic of Boston Globe:

Langeveld’s advice is to go (almost) online-only with Boston.com, and to launch or subsidise a network of hyperlocal sites all over the area, and launch a network of local niche verticals focussed on weather, traffic, jobs, entertainment, education and more. He proposes a tiered, variable pricing model for all, with most of the content free, but paid premium access for a “small but highly-engaged group.” This income could be supplemented with transactional revenue, through selling theatre tickets, for example, or facilitating restaurant reservations.

This model could also expose the Globe’s city-wide reach to a hyper-local market of advertisers (a longer tail than they would previously had access to). This coupled with a free/premium hybrid mode and the paper could be on its way back up.

Regarding the print side of things it’s a simple mechanic to alleviate some immediate strain: Make the paper a weekly and include the news created over the week from the hyper-local portals and citizens media. Pull city-wide, larger advertisers in to this weekly printed publication to subsidise the cost of the print and drop the price to allow for quantity to be sold and to make the paper appear to be more accessible to the everyday person in the street.

There is no quick-fix for papers such as the Boston Globe, that is certain. But it is imperative that these papers start to adapt or simply succumb to a swift death.

Mail & Guardian have, for some reason, taken it upon themselves to create a list of 300 young South Africans you have to take for lunch.

It is not an enviable task by any means. Someone is always going to point out that you missed some or other person out, it’s the nature of a list! I think MG does a sterling job and I think Elan also composed himself a great little list of people who should be considered for the list next year.

But this year I was fortunate enough to be added to the list of 300. Initially I paged through the Media section of the list and realised that I wasn’t there. I found myself buried in the Technology section. I think this depicts the progress of my career and illustrates the choices I’ve made in a very accessible way. I am no longer a man working to be heard in the media.

My insert read as follows:

Nic Haralambous; project manager; social media; Vodacom

From the get go, it’s obvious that Nic Haralambous is deeply in love with multimedia. The 24-year old attributes his preference for online over print media to his view of the internet as the more “democratic communication” medium.
Proactive is probably the best word to describe him. “Don’t bitch and moan, give solutions,” he says. It appears to be his mantra.
After hearing a speech by Bob Geldof on television in 2005, he booked a ticket to Edinburgh for the next day, where he rocked up with his film camera to photograph the G8 summit and he was beaten by riot police.
Haralambous has written and shot for the Sunday Times, designed websites for Financial Mail and managed blogspots for the Mail & Guardian. He also started up the website SA Rocks and recently moved from general manager of the social media website, Zoopy, to Vodacom. — Ilham Rawoot

Lunch spot: Plaka, Illovo, Johannesburg

I am joined on the list by Saul, Vincent, Vinny, Jason, Mike, Charl and many more deserving people. The youth in this country are here to stay and make a difference.

I love discovering trends and genres that I have previously been completely blind and ignorant to. The most recent discovery that I have made, now don’t laugh, is SteamPunk.

Yes, Steam put right there next to the word Punk, which gives us Steampunk. For those of you who aren’t aware of what Steampunk is here is a short definition:

Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date.

Here are some images to help your imagination get started on the idea of Steampunk:

Starting a new job is always a bit tricky. You need to balance the people you work with, the new projects, the people you outsource, the scope of things, the context of things, the history and the progress as well as the potential and your sanity.

That’s what I have been doing for the past 3 weeks. I have willingly chosen to drop off the radar. Sometimes it’s nice to be off of a radar. Sometimes it’s quite pleasant to not have people know what you did, when you did and who you did it for. Sometimes it’s nice not to be in touch and updating all the time.

I studied to be a journalist. I trained for difficult situations, for uncomfortable things to happen and for strange situations verging on impossible. I have wanted to be a war-correspondent since I was 10 years old. That will not happen.

But on Sunday I was involved in a freak accident involving a plane, a bakkie and a few bloggers freebording. I ran towards the plane as did our whole group and not for one second did I think about stopping, taking photos or video and sending word to a media organisations. I could’ve, I am capable and I know how to, but I’d rather help. It’s that simple and now I am certain of that.