The day an opposition rally made front page

Correct me if I'm wrong but today's made media history by my calculations. Here's why, the Malay Mail arrived at our office just only and I saw this:



Yes. The photo isn't doctored. That's a picture of a big 'ol opposition rally on the front page telling you that there's a 15,000 strong turnout. Previously, big opposition rallies have never been picked up by local newspapers, let alone having the numbers confirmed. Only place I ever saw those pictures was on the internet. (Click here for a video)

So what does this mean?

Firstly, I'm pretty sure the fact that The Malay Mail is now owned by Blu Inc has something to do with this. But more importantly, there does seem to be a trend where the national newspapers are opening up and covering the opposition more and more.

The question is, how much more? And are they being covered in context?

Digital shift makes radio like never before

The music industry just isn't what it used to be decades ago. In your dad's time, an artiste asking a radio station to pay royalties was unheard of and would promptly result in the artiste disappearing from radio waves and seeing CD sales tank.

Today, CD sales are tanking anyway. And the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants radio stations to pay up. Simple logic really. It used to be that both the recording industry and radio stations had a symbiotic relationship. Radio stations get to play songs for free and make money off selling ads. The recording industry got free publicity from radio stations and sold CDs to make money.



In about 40 years, this has changed. Today, CDs are not the only way people buy music and radio is no longer the only way for people to hear about a great act. The internet means word-of-mouth is much more effective and distribution doesn't have to be physical.

So, along comes the RIAA with the idea that since it no longer relies on radio to make CD sales, and since, this essentially means the radio stations are making money for free off their content, they should get a cut of the advertising revenue. Genius!

This has stoked quite a lot of debate, and while its a sad situation for radio, I do think that industries do need to adapt to the realities ANY social shift incur upon them. In this case, the internet, the proliferation of personal media players and the digitisation of music have put the radio stations in a spot. But if the old business model breaks, then the new business models must come on.

My suggestion would be that radio stations start thinking about how to disassociate proprietary content from music. Funny hosts, witty scripts and the opportunity to interact is what makes most of the charm of radio. With music now being such a personal thing, and iTunes helping people sample and enjoy songs much more than ever, radio stations need to think of making relevant content.

What about a couple of talk show podcasts? Quality content people can listen to anytime, anywhere. Or branching out to video?

We're certainly seeing that now in Malaysia with the effort Media Prima puts behind developing gua.com.my but there's definitely a long road to tread. Still, with the ruckus the RIAA is creating in the US, it'd be wise for radio broadcasting industries in other countries to start preparing for the inevitable - when a media consumption format starts to go the way of the dodo.

So did you study blogging in Uni?

Read a funny story in the New Straits Times today about Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) might soon allow students to take blogging courses as part of their subjects.

Vice-chancellor Datuk Seri Prof Dr Ibrahim Abu Shah said something interesting, and I quote:

"Anyone can become a blogger now," he told reporters after a seminar here yesterday.

But this did not mean bloggers could write about anything, as they first needed to master several aspects of writing, such as language, ethics and accuracy of reporting.
Ibrahim said he supported any proposal to offer courses on blogging and that it was the most suitable time to do so.

I find this statement self-contradictory. First, Dr. Ibrahim is right by saying "Anyone can become a blogger now." That's absolutely right. Your plumber could be a blogger. Your mother could be a blogger. And don't be surprised if one day the pope starts a blog.

So if this is right, then why add requirements to becoming a bogger by saying that "they first needed to master several aspects of writing, such as language, ethics and accuracy of reporting?"

Does this mean if my English, Bahasa Melayu or Mandarin sucks I can't be a blogger?

Or if I don't hold on to the same "ethics" you subscribe to, I'm not credible (maybe in your eyes, not that of my fans)?

Or if I report on rumours and wild speculation, that I cannot be a credited as a blogger? Tell that to these guys - their blog is practically a rumour mill! And a very good one at that.

What does it mean to be a blogger? Some very enlightened people I listen to put it very well: blogging is just a publishing tool. Just like how anyone can write a book, anyone can blog.

Furthermore, not all bloggers are journalists. Some a diarists (they use the blog as their personal diary), some are story-tellers (ever read a blog that was pure fiction), some are commentators (they put forth their opinion on whatever subject they see fit), some are fanboys (they blog about their hobby, their pets etc) and very, very few bloggers will claim to be journalists.

Tom Merritt (links to episode 720 of Buzz Out Loud where comments were made) has a good solution for this. If a blogger wishes to be accorded the rights and pr0tection that's afforded journalists, then they must adhere to the same ethics and regulations that journalists adhere to.

If a blogger says, "hey, I'm not a journalist, just someone who writes!", then they are pretty much free to do what they want, but then they can't expect the protection journalists get (like the ability to "protect sources" even while subpeonaed).

One thing is clear though, this blanket definition of bloggers has to end. Not all bloggers are media. Certainly not some of our most famous political leaders (who have or recently started blogs).

(I mean, at least I won't consider those bloggers media).

Update: Thanks to the wonder of Twitter, some feedback with Twitter-people led me to this thought: Would being a degree-holding blogger entitle you to more money from blog-advertising?

Say hello to the new Malay Mail

Were you Malay Mail readers welcomed by this new masthead today?



Just got back from the launch (or re-launch) of the Malay Mail - that well-loved tabloid with a 112-year history.

As background, in case you haven't heard, earlier this year, The Malay Mail was sold to publisher BluInc by the Media Prima Group. Tonight's event is the the second time the paper is reinventing itself in the space of two years, but I'm glad to report that under the hood, it's the same, familiar faces (with new notable additions) pushing the paper along.

The big change: The Malay Mail is going back to becoming that afternoon paper we all know and love. The key operating word being afternoon.

Getting to the venue, I was pretty impressed with the setup - a corridor muraled by previous editions of The Malay Mail. Sort of a mini-history lesson for me.



And the hall was packed with people:



But getting to the content of the evening, the person sitting next to me could not help but mention to me: "Why is Mr. Ibrahim mentioning "bloggers" and "internet" so much in his speech?" Actually, I couldn't help but notice that too. In my humble opinion, that's a good thing.

I sorta picked up that Mr. Ibrahim also talked about how The Malay Mail's heritage as an afternoon paper meant they were delivering people more current news than the rest of the market (remember reading yesterday's World Cup results off The Malay Mail because The Star didn't have any?) According to the man, The Malay Mail's emphasis on its online site to deliver current news was going to mirror this role it used to serve.

Flipping through the actual printed paper, the changes are quite apparent. There are quite a number of new columns - one even covers the blogosphere - from fairly opinionated people (I think I spied Amir Muhammad on the list). My favourite section - the complaints section - is back with two full pages. What's The Malay Mail, after all, without customer complaints?

Overall, I'm going to have to say that I'm slightly disappointed with the lack of lifestyle pages. Still, the focus on commentary and news is certainly welcome - if the paper can deliver on Mr. Ibrahim's promise to give us the "alternative opinion / viewpoint" that Malaysian readers today crave.

On a totally un-related matter, I also realised at the event that if you stick a huge enough logo anywhere, you can get people to camwhore in front of your logo. I'm just wondering if this is an idea that could be turned to a stunt:



On another TOTALLY unrelated matter, did I mention that the SWAG bag was stuffed with goodies. I think it puts some of us PR people to shame the sort of SWAG we give out. Here, have a look -the silver box is a 1GB USB drive:

Playing to the Tune of Green

Was catching up on Buzz Out Loud episodes from the past couple of days in the car just now when Molly Wood made an interesting comment that wasn't part of the actual story.

Commenting on the Crave blog's story on HDTracks, a new music service that allows downloads of full-CD quality, uncompressed digital music files, Molly said something about "this is green too."

Being the (savvy?) PR practitioner that I am, my ears pricked. How does green music sound as a catchphrase to you? Would you buy more digital music online if I told you you were helping save the earth?

You know, on a second thought, it's probably quite an obvious connection. But why hasn't this angle ever been picked up by the good folks of already established online music stores (which I'm sure you'll have no problems naming)?

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever read an article covering green music and how much greener digital music tracks are compared to pressing CDs. I'm sure there's still an effect on the environment (heat release and energy consumption from keeping servers switched on 24/7 etc.) but compared to running factories pressing CDs, I'm sure the numbers will show some savings.

What would the impact be if the whole world went digital? And not just for music, but for videos, games and other digitally distributed content as well? How much greener would we be? (Sounds like a theme for next year's Earth Day?)

So, yeah, a thought-provoking topic to think about and I'm actually hoping that someone picks this up and goes run a study.

In the meantime, go home and ask yourselves - is my music green?

What? You mean what I'm consuming isn't mainstream (media)?

There was a bit of interesting banter on Episode 139 of This Week in Tech revolving journalists who do shows on the internet (like on TWIT or Cnet or Tech TV in the old days) jumping over to "mainstream" media to make it big.

But would folks like Veronica Belmont necessarily need to get a job as a CNN anchor to make it big? I thought CNet and Revision 3 was as big as they come!

Though this has been discussed much, it still struck me that these were the shows I am listening to or watching more and more of, to the detriment of the more "mainstream" TV3 or newspapers. An oxymoron perhaps? Or is "mainstream" changing?

Not too long ago, it was widely considered by marketers that your average working class adult would consume media on a daily basis at routine intervals. The morning paper. 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. prime time TV. The breakfast show on the way to work. Sticking an ad into any of these slots would cost more simply because the stats show more viewers were consuming media at these time-slots.

Personally, for me, this has changed. Yes, I still read the papers every morning (to keep up with current trends, for job's-sake) but that's about it. I hardly watch TV anymore. Instead, my morning drives to work are dominated by catching up with the latest tech news, miniature gaming news or world news via podcasts. When i'm bored, I surf the internet with RSSed links to sites like Soccernet. More and more, I'm building an echo chamber of the news that I'm interested in and filtering out everything else.

I wonder how many people out there are like me? I'm guessing few, but growing.

Here's why:

1. Content Syndication technology (RSS)
Thanks to RSS, content delivery can now be automated, giving rise tonew forms of media like podcasting (sticking an Audio file to an RSS feed) that give people access to timely information that can be consumed at their own time. It's like choosing the channels you want to watch, and then watching them at your own time. The bad thing is, you'll be limiting yourself only to the type of news you want to hear.

2. More personal media players and multifunction devices.
All the best content in the world isn't going to do you much good if you're going to be stuck at home on the computer to consume it. The good thing is, more and more people are now carrying portable devices that are capable of playing media. It could be your phone, your MP3 player, your PDA. The option is now there for you to sync your favourite RSS-delivered content and consume it wherever you are.

3. Mobile internet getting better and better.
People a long time ago predicted the death of the newspaper thanks to the internet. As it turned out, those predictions were unfounded mainly because people didn't want to be stuck at home reading the newspaper on their computers. They rather prefer to read it in their toilets.

However, if you take my two points above and mesh it with the fact that now you can get a decent 3G / WiFi connection in the toilet and your mobile phone / device is most likely with you. Heh. You can easily see how a small device can replace that paper you used to hold in the toilet.

So, how much do you consume "mainstream" media?

Blogs won't wipe out Newspapers

I've just read the Eric Alterman's fantastic treatise on the future of the American newspaper, conspiciously titled "Out of Print", and one particular phrase really piqued my interest.

Alterman writes:

It is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper...

I thought: "Hey, that's me!"

What Alterman is pointing out is that the very bloggers who are being hailed as the successors to the established media institutions are in fact reliant on the very media they are tipped to succeed. But the gaping, unanswered question is - what happens when print goes?

The assumption is most bloggers (myself included) are not news generators, merely aggregators. The modus operandi is to reference other news sites or articles found in newspapers and add an opinion. But if newspapers were not to exist anymore, where would this primary source of news come from?

"But," you say, "didn't this last elections demonstrate the fact that people trust online media and blogs more than the established institutions?" The answer is yes. But the rebuttal is that political news is not all the news there is in the world.

If I were to stop reading The Star, NST, The Sun, Harian Metro or any of the mainstream papers I read everyday, I'd never hear about the plight of a lorry driver, or reusable rubber gloves, or even the Sufiah Omar story which was broken by Britain's biggest-selling newspaper.

Which blogger is going to have the 1) organisational support structures 2) clout and 3) access to contacts in order to generate these news stories? Not every blogger is going to be invited to press events. Not every blogger is going to be able to wave a press tag and get clearance to check public records (investigative journalism, does it happen here?). Not every blogger is going to have their work checked and edited several times to ensure factual accuracy or quote multiple sources. Not every blogger is / was a journalist.

This is, of course, a generalisation and there are going to be exceptions. But, generally-speaking, if the newspaper disappears, so does the organisation that serves as our primary news source. And I'm predicting that can't happen.

We still need proper reporting (the lead story, quotes from multiple sources, verified numbers and facts). We need wide reporting (coverage from top political news, all the way to those human interest stories you know only a select few will read). We need a news vehicle that will push us news outside our interests (so we are exposed to the reality of the world around us).

This doesn't mean media organisations won't change. They have to, this much is clear. In this age of instantaneous reporting, expect to see the established media institutions using the online medium more and more. Expect to see some blogs (like Gizmodo) become media institutions (e.g. Gawker Media) in their own right.

Don't expect to see newspapers becoming blogs (though some blogging may happen). Blogs won't wipe out newspapers.

Media + New Media and the new age journalist?

Was listening to an old episode of Buzz Out Loud (timestamp 39:30) on the way to work and there was a really interesting discussion about the relationship between blogs and traditional news media.

You can click on the link above to listen to it (and if you're interested in PR and media etc., you should!) But an interesting point was brought up that some newspapers (in the US) could benefit from giving their journalists blogs, and these blogs could allow entirely credible media (say WSJ) to cover stuff that they normally wouldn't cover in print. Or provide opinions or commentary that wouldn't make it in print.

Would this sort of dynamic would work here in Malaysia (thanks to our own laws and controls over media)? I believe it can. I know at the moment when we say "blogs" people think "politics / opposition" but blogs don't necessarily need to cover potentially inflamatory topics like politics, race and religion; rather, they could serve a supplementary role to whatever hard news gets published in the actual print.

If you know me, you know I've been talking about this for the longest time. Newspapers could give their Tech Editors a blog and see where that takes them. A while back, The Sun had blogs setup for their editors (I've lost the link, if you have it and it's still alive, could you post it in the comments?) At least one local tech publication I know has a blog - check out The Zone.

Yes, I know many journalists have blogs of their own, but personally (as a reader), I'm interested in seeing the crossover between printed medium and the online happen. The print mag / paper is your product, but the online blog is the conversation that let's us engage with the people behind the product.

Especially for mags ( and I believe for pullouts), the community you build around your readers is going to be crucial to the success of the publication. In the old world, you'd put out a product and count your readers by subscriptions. In the new world, subscription and circulation numbers don't go away, but the web will let you make that connection with readers / fans in a way print doesn't.

By "connection" I mean this: Journalists have started to become personalities, and I think this is probably due to the way blogs affect publishing. I loved John C. Dvorak's column in PC Mag (the Malaysian Edition is now defunct). Now, even if I can't read his column, I'm able to follow his blog. I'm not just reading PC Mag, I'm reading Dvorak. In the same way, I'm listening to Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, Tom Merritt, Molly Wood, Don Risinger and all these other really intelligent techy people. It started with a podcast or a blog, but I now follow them on Twitter as well.

I also follow some of our very good local tech editors like aggromonkey, fatcatlim and, across the causeway, eBolasaurus.

At the end of the day, I guess you could say it's about reading credible stuff intelligent people put up, regardless of whether its in print or online through blogs. But there's space for both and I think blogs convey a personality, opinion and enables feedback in a way print can't (technically, you could still write letters to the editor).