Philip Gomes

Jeff Jarvis.

So imagine this future without pages and sites, this future that’s all built on process over product. If you’re what used to be a content-creation – if you’re Stephen Fry, post-media – you’re all about insinuating yourself into that stream. If you’re about content curation – formerly known as editing – then you’re all about prioritizing streams for people; that’s how you add value now.

Getting people to come to you so you can tell them what you say they should know while showing them ads they didn’t want from advertisers who bear the cost and risk of the entire experience? That’s just so 2008. Now it’s time to go with the stream.

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More interesting food for thought from Jeff Jarvis on the collaboration economy.

Curley says that “we intend to participate in that stream, in that revenue stream.” But what about the content stream? He needs to participate in what Marissa Mayer calls the hyperpersonal news stream. He has to break out of the idea of sites and portals and go to where the people are. Yet Curley said he’d prevent his customers from redistributing his content through emails or “re-syndication” – from the stream, in short.

The bolding is mine. Increasingly I find this to be true. I'm at the point now where I find the entire idea of a single site or portal to be a constraining thing from a creative point of view.

It's a locked in/up/down thing, forcing the content creators/consumers (now one and the same) into certain behaviours and modes of production that don't - in my opinion - represent the future of media.

It's also a resource thing. I now see sites and portals as heavy things, anchored in a single place, unable to go to where the action is, consuming time and resources in a way that's unnecessary.

Unlike looser social structures which give you real flexibility and the ability to react and reach across a range of platforms.

To, in effect, go where the action is - or be where the action is.

Something is starting to take shape, you can see and feel it. We're about to break free.

Single sites, single [media] organisations and single governments cannot hope to compete against the plurality of millions of producers, creators and consumers speaking to each other, collaborating with each other and sharing with each other.

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Serious media observers far and wide have had their say about ABC supremo Mark Scott's speech about the new media environment, Rupert Murdoch and private versus public publishing and broadcasting options.

Here's mine.

Scott's speech was un-remarkable, important not for it's content but for who was making it. Notable in that a public broadcaster was defining a different version to content publishing and production that that currently envisaged by Murdoch and his ilk.

But then, for the millions of people who have spent time exploring new forms of publishing content online in a first hand manner over the past decade, none of what he had to say would be news.

You could see this coming a mile away. Where was Scott five years ago?

Best line of the day goes to Ben Eltham at New Matilda.

In the land of the blind, the man with a print-out of a Clay Shirky blog is king.

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The text in the above image was sent to Twitter via the AP's iPhone application which is one of the best apps out there, period. Get it if you have an iPhone.

In fact, I think the AP app points the way forward to a new web world, one where the idea of a conventional news website is starting to look very obsolete. But that's another story.

This sharing action by me and the web multitudes has now become a natural one in terms of content, and I'm happy to see the AP actively encouraging that.

How would you like that content served sir? Now that's customer service!

But it's a puzzling dissonance when you follow the link through to the article itself and read this quote from AP's Tom Curley at the World Media Summit held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. The location is of course also dripping with irony.

We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing. Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers," Curley said. "We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content.

Curley was not to be outdone, with News Corp's Rupert Murdoch following on and doing his best to label his customers criminals.

The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.

I'm no big media commentator but even I know enough to see that their words don't appear to match their actions. I'm also no Huffington Post or Google, but I and millions of others aggregate and curate content to our own small circles via a variety of web tools.

The thing about this new media environment is that no one gets out alive. You're either in, or you're out. You can't be both simultanously and seek to define the rules of engagement. And you can't go back. Which is of course where Curley and Murdoch want us to go.

Extended reading: Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine has a link rich post on this subject. Read it for greater context.

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I've been thinking along these lines for the past six months. Interesting days ahead.

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It's been fascinating to watch Twitter linkage to the Magda Szubanski story, with most going to today's news item in the entertainment section of the SMH.

Positively, at least the SMH item mentions (but no direct link) Cycling Tips. But how hard was it to include a direct link? Give the brother some love Fairfax.

Still, while the story has been running for several days now and was community driven - real change in how the MSM treats community driven stories and how folks consume and spread news is still a long way from being realised.

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Mark Day by-passes a decade of blogging and pioneer work in conversational media by others, in order to write a shameless advertorial for his News Ltd masters - a piece that includes this howler.

The Punch was the first local site to try to create a format to meet the habits of that part of the audience that had forsaken the traditional and more formal methods of news delivery.

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Transmedia? Interesting piece in HuffPo.

In a social networking world what's the future of TV?

For the moment, there's a strong imperative to "protect the mother ship," as industry insiders put it, by treating the extensions into other media as non-essential and keeping primary focus on the television series. But, in Japan, we are seeing series which unfold simultaneously across comics, games, film, and television, without having a dominant medium. This may well be the future not only of television but entertainment more generally. As the content expands across media, when does it stop being television and become something else?

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On The Insiders this past Sunday yet another big media guy made the claim (In the Sunday Papers segment - no transcript available) that the blogosphere is a media of rumour, unlike newspapers.

This time it was regular panelist and journalist Brian Toohey making the claim.

Well the news papers are following into the spirit of the blogosphere here, we're reporting rumours and this one is a rumour, rumours abound that Peter Costello may quit politics.....

For the sake of argument I'll assume an Australian political blogosphere.

Toohey's comments are of course a sad joke. There is no effective Australian political blogosphere to rumour monger.

It was stillborn several years ago when the big media players like News Ltd smartly leveraged their way into the format in their online media properties.

That development effectively killed off a developing independent political media infrastructure that may have been on it's way to becoming one like the highly effective American netroots version.

The political blogosphere in Australia is now 'owned' by corporate media entities like News Ltd and Fairfax - with the independent remnants of the early-to-mid 2000's toothless in terms of influence, and without the critical mass to make a difference.

In terms of independence we are left with media like Crikey and New Matilda but I don't think they qualify as truly so - they are as much a part of the corporate political class in Australia as a News Ltd or Fairfax.

Lastly, Toohey is wrong on substance when it comes to the Costello rumours.

Australian political leadership speculation has always been the exclusive preserve of the Canberra political class and press gallery, and it regularly graces the front pages of their newspapers and TV screens.

So, If the rumours come from anywhere now it's corporate media; with the independent political blogosphere a mere mirror of their sins.

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According to News Ltd's Glenn Milne, Kevin Rudd said the F word.

Kevin Rudd has launched another expletive-laden tirade -- this time directed at Labor's factional bosses, including three female MPs.

The outburst two weeks ago left the hardened ALP operatives shocked.

The factional leaders had gone to see the Prime Minister in his Parliament House office to object to government plans to slash MPs' printing allowances from $100,000 to $75,000 a year. The decision was in response to a report into parliamentary perks by the Auditor-General.

According to sources present, Mr Rudd said: "I don't care what you f---ers think!"

He then went on, singling out Senator David Feeney declaring, "You can get f---ed", before asking, "Don't you f---ing understand?"

Today's Sunday morning political talkies are awash with this as a leading talking point. A narrative of the PM that the gallery has been attempting to craft since his election - a nasty man who swears at women.

All without a shred of proof. Is this what the gallery reptiles are paid for? More trivial trivia sourced from 'sources' who are never named? Is this what passes for political journalism and commentary today?

Lest we forget who Glenn Milne is, here is one of his greatest hits, showing the good behaviour he's renowned for. I'd use the word hypocrite, but it isn't strong enough.

Oh, and is it just me laughing at the idea of hardened ALP operatives being shocked by this? Riiiiiight.

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