Much as this is a blog on media change, it is impossible not to get drawn into the last few days of speculation about the future of Katie Couric and her role at the CBS Evening News. I'll get to the media change part soon.
The New York Times weighs in today with a lengthy backroom piece, co-bylined by its sterling media writer Bill Carter, that reveals a recent CBS executive discussion with Couric and her agent about whether she might leave the anchor job before her contract expires in 2011 --- say, right after the U.S. election later this year --- and occupy a new network role.
Now, I've only managed in the much tinier Canadian division of this big league, and only for a couple of years, but the leak of this discussion is almost certainly the kiss of death for her tenure. Anchor loyalty is frail and needs constant nurturing. Audiences flee easily. It's hard to imagine how viewers will provide loyalty (not that they were, anyway) when it's feasible Couric and CBS are even musing about a premature departure. Just to have that meeting and discussion --- or to leak it, anyway --- is to essentially generate the goodbye.
Which brings me back to the topic of media change, because Couric was supposed to be it --- a new approach to nightly news, a new vivaciousness, perhaps with a new set of commitments around life-relevant themes, in order to connect with a disaffected audience and help save the genre. While many of the purists were worried she would fluff down the news, their concerns were the least of the eventual worries.
No sooner was she on than did she start seeming more solemn and, well, wholly traditional. She'd surrendered that wondrous breakfast-time Today Show effect and adopted nothing magical in moving to dinner-time CBS News.
Her status today is an eight-figure mess and her demise will once again touch off the debate about the viability of the nightly newscast. U.S. network television news ratings are in decline, partly because of the addition of all-news networks like CNN and Fox, and partly because the hour of the broadcast is harder to fix as an appointment in a commuter/long work day world.
Given that it was reported this week that CBS News is in talks with CNN about cost-sharing its newsgathering worldwide, the Tiffany network is in the midst of a journalistic perfect storm.
The newspaper has never been the medium of choice for young people, but the industry has long been concerned that this generation possesses the technology to ensure it never grows into the ink-on-paper consumer. What would you like first today, the good or the bad? If there is one distinct expressive difference between so-called old and new media, it's that the new brigade largely enjoys immunity from the slings and arrows shared by their users. Where U.S. print and broadcast media find themselves on the hook for what appears on paper or on the air, digital media are provided a legal shield through telecommunications law from liability for their users' postings and content. It is intriguing, to say the least, to read the new Associated Press Managing Editors/Missouri School of Journalism report (here's the AP story on it) on how editors and readers each approach online journalistic standards. If you live in Canada, you have to bear with perceptions often groomed below the border. Case in point: The economics of the newspaper. There seems no other way around it: If advertising is to be effective in the digital space, it is going to have to learn more about user behaviour online and tailor messages accordingly. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Newspapers long ago found that readers liked a question-and-answer format on issues, and FAQs online have been with us from day one (particularly, it seems, for troubleshooting chapters in hardware and software manuals, instead of a live troubleshooter at the end of a phone line --- but I digress). If you're looking for a new understanding of media consumption and distribution, here's a quick primer. Loic Le Meur's video blog outlines his "social map" and the critical connections he makes to his friends and acquaintances to push content and pull content. If the news wants me, it will find me, he suggests. It's a fascinating YouTube addition and worth studying --- and, perhaps, implementing. |
I am the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at Self-Counsel Press, an Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia, and the
Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. In 2008 I launched themediamanager.com to chronicle media change, then media ethics, standards and freedom. I was recently the mayoralty candidate in Vancouver for the Non-Partisan Association. I am the former CBC Ombudsman of English Services and have held the senior editorial roles at CTV News, The Hamilton Spectator and Southam News. I was the founding Executive Editor of National Post, Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Bureau Chief and General News Editor at The Canadian Press, and host on CBC Newsworld, among other media roles. My social networking includes activity on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. I also write for a for-fun-only music site, rockzombies.us Archives
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The Canadian analytics firm Sysomos has published new data on nearly 100 million posts it reviewed and it shows
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