The future of media?

Yesterday, Said Business School hosted the 2006 Oxford Media Convention so, being interested in all things media, I signed up and went along. (See webcast at the Oxford Internet Institute)

I can't say that I was entirely impressed with the pannels and speakers though, due to a TIS (Technology & Innovation Strategy) assignment due later that day, I can't confess to having heard them all.

What I did see and hear has made me sit and think about what I think is the future of the media. The internet is certainly a very disruptive technology and many lessons were learnt from the changes in the music industry which the media would be well advised to remember.

As I formulate my ideas, let me share with you the predictions of Richard Sambrook of the BBC:

* News is moving online: teens in this country tend get their news online. TV audiences have fallen and now people have unlimited information available their fingertips.

* Public wants authenticity: more and more news items are becoming a stylised creation in a virtual studio somewhere. People are not being fooled. They know a act when they see it and they want the raw gritty truth to be told.

* Transparancy: is being demanded. It is very easy to send an e-mail with your views on an issue that has been reported and more and more people are doing just that. Interviewees are publishing their version of an interview on their blogs for comparision with the finished version. It would be foolish for media firms to put up a wall and ignore their customers, the challenge now is to embrace these new terms of engagement and find a way to listen to their customers.

* Responsibility is shifting: gone are the days when people sat before their TV sets at 6pm every day and accepted as correct the news presented to them. Today the news media no longer owns the news. There is still a need for mediation but this role is a different one than in the past.

* The Digital Divide problem between those people who have access to/and consistently use the internet will continue to widen. The challenge is to identify the two audiences and make provisions for both marketplaces.

I've been doing a quick look around the internet to see what others think about the future of the industry. I don't necessarily agree with everything found on them but here are a few worth having a look at:

* Hypergene Media Blog - this group is looking into the topic of participatory journalism and citizen media.

* Slashdot - news for geeks

* An interesting article just published by McKinsey Quartely on the Dwindling readership faced by newspapers.

PS. See article by Richard Sambrook on How the net is transforming news