Newsrooms are making enormous strides in championing digital content, but it's always worthwhile to remember not everyone is poised to reap the benefits of this work.
A new U.S. study shows one in five households has never used e-mail.
The Parks Associates survey indicates nearly three in ten households has never used a computer to create a document. And one in five has never looked up a Web site, searched for information online, or exchanged e-mail.
The study estimates some 20 million U.S. households aren't connected, and that only seven per cent of them have plans to get online in the next year.
Older and less-educated Americans are the largest cohorts in this unconnected minority. More than one-half of those who hadn't used e-mail were over 65, and 56 per cent of the non-e-mailers didn't have more than a high-school education.
The numbers are in decline --- last year's study found 29 per cent were not connected --- and while economics might play some role in the digital divide, the report's authors believe the larger problem is that those not online just don't see a reason to be there.
Arguably the most significant conflict in social media history has erupted. It all started with a seemingly friendly --- as in the fledgling Google Friend Connect --- salvo that has alarmed Facebook to the point that it is denying service to the new social application. When the BBC announced earlier that its international Web presence would begin to feature advertising, it stood to reason that its formidable foreign service would compete for --- and often win --- advertising at others' expense. The Knight Foundation is spending about $25 million over five years to seed some new applications for newsgathering and distribution. Its list of 2008 winners for its News Challenge program was released today. The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported 2007 figures today on digital advertising, and not surprisingly the growth is healthy and ahead of growth in other spaces: up 26 per cent to a total of $21.2 billion U.S. That's a record sum, but not growth on the same scale of the previous year. The blogosphere is often called the Wild West, largely because the freedom to express is at times used as a licence to defame. Intellectual property is often swiped. And at their worst bloggers and posters assume immunity from the laws that ensure fair comment and intent. Like any irresponsible media, the worst of the bloggers give the great bloggers a bad reputation. In an everyone-is-a-journalist age, we're going to need all the help we can get to assess the credibility of sources. More than likely in the collaborative age, this assessment will be increasingly crowd-sourced and not simply produced through market forces. In most media, advertising is the principal revenue stream journalism paddles. The recent State of the News Media report pointed to a disturbing phenomenon, the decoupling of advertising and news, as a result of new digital formats and a diminution of conventional media ad placement. Economist.com has, like its British counterpart at BBC News, stripped down its splash-page-heavy look and unveiled a sleeker, deeper-running home page with a respectable amount of interactivity. The British newspaper, The Guardian, is among the most sophisticated of all news media in the digital space, so any contemplation or decision on its part deserves attention. |
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
January 2015
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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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