ALJ301 reactions, thoughts and musings

So Fairfax Media will axe 550 jobs across Australia and New Zealand… the news hasn’t surprised some. The Australian’s Mark Day blames it on the economic squeeze caused by “classified rivers of gold flowing towards the internet”.

I reckon it’s a case of old media not fully embracing new technology. And journalists aren’t happy.

Interestingly (I work for News Limited), at the same time Fairfax got their infamous email we got one detailing the upgrade to Adelaide printing presses. Makes you wonder…

UPDATE (SEPTEMBER 3): Click here for a great commentary by Media Watch.

UPDATE (SEPTEMBER 16): Click here for some interesting thoughts from Juan Senor, partner with the Innovation International Media Group.

This week’s piece (PDF – head to chapter six) described the South Korean OhmyNews phenomenon.

Creator Oh Yeon-ho goes by the motto “every citizen is a reporter“. But, unlike blogs, contributors must conform to a strict code of ethics. I reckon this is a smarter way of tapping into the blogging world, a way of overcoming the Wikipedia-type problem of not being credible while still building that all-important sense of community.

Even more ingeniously, writers are paid according to the story’s popularity. So unlike many other news forums (apart from their few token attempts), it’s the readers who decide what the top news story is, not editors.

The format is clearly working: the site has been profitable since 2003 and makes 70 per cent of its revenue from advertising. It seems to me the concept worked because it moved a step ahead of other mediums stuck doing things the old way.

So what’s to stop the journalism world from heading this way in the future, especially if the advertising model is working?

In launching wholly online, OhmyNews also saved a heck of a lot of money. Makes me wonder if Fairfax Media had something similar in mind when it launched the Brisbane Times last year…

– Koren