Augmented Journalism

The Dutch military approach, where victory was the only goal, was sustained for seven ugly World Cup matches. Understanding that this method was needed to reach the finals of the tournament, Dutch soccer fans were hopeful that their national team would eventually start playing the real football again. In vain.

In the end the Dutch team became the metaphor for a pale tournament, with hardly any highlights. Hope was cherished for over a month, but it didn’t last after all – justice was done by Spanish goal getter Iniesta and what was left was one big pool of disappointment.

Dutch newspapers this morning don’t focus on the ugly game that was played by their national team, nor on the un-Dutch approach (at moments the fans thought they were watching German, Italian or Argentine players instead), but only on the disappointing grand finale.  There even is some anger against the English referee, although this man obviously could have given the Dutch one or two extra red cards. And of course there is pride. “We fought like lions”, De Telegraaf writes.

In the mean time, the rest of the world (including the non-Spanish part of it) concludes that it would have been much better if the Dutch wouldn’t have reached the finals at all. That won’t stop the Dutch authorities – and fans – from giving their heroes a warm welcome when the return home. An “almost victory”-tour in the canals of Amsterdam will be held on Tuesday, next to a bunch of other celebrations.

In preparation for the World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain all Dutch newspapers are preparing “Orange attachments”. From one or two extra pages, an orange-colored front page to complete extra magazines, every single newsroom is spending long hours in the preparation for their publications before and after next sunday’s World Cup final.

Popular newspaper De Telegraaf will publish an extra magazine on saturday. On top of that, the paper will print extra issues in countries like Spain, Italy and France. Editor-in-Chief Sjuul Paradijs says that “the need for information is spectacular. We have to help the Dutch people who are on a vacation outside the Netherlands”, he told press agency ANP.

Free newspaper Metro, which normally doesn’t appear in the weekends, will publish an extra edition on saturday, which will be distributed in public transport. Competitor Sp!ts intends to come with “a spectacular deal” on monday. Editor-in-chief Willem Schouten – who just returned from South Africa where he watched the semifinals – says that the emphasis will be on “all the joy and sadness around the ‘national experience’ of football.”

One big exception is found at the newsroom of the religiously based Reformatorisch Dagblad. This small national paper won’t publish a single word on the Soccer World Cup, or on any professional sport activity.  RD-readers won’t even find the final results in their newspaper. Antoon Stam, secretary of the editorial board, argues that right at the creation of the newspaper the founders have decided to ignore sports, as many games are played on Sundays, a “body cult” is created around it and excessive amounts of money are being paid in transfers of the participating players. ”So we have no sport at all,” Stam told a Volkskrant-reporter.

Rue89 has the ambition of contributing to freedom of speech and diversity of opinions, through the free use of electronic networks.

The first line of Rue89’s mission statement is as clear as glass. The website that was started in 2007 wants to inform and opiniate on the internet. But since yesterday Rue89’s world is a little bit more complex. It published its first printed magazine, with the ambition of making it a monthly.

Rue89 was started three years ago as an initiative of four journalists who had to leave Libération. Within  months it became one of France’s most popular news and opinion platforms. Rue89 combines professional and amateur content.

The new monthly has 100 small pages and consists for two thirds of material that was first published on the web. The magazine costs about $5 per issue, a subscription for a whole year is $45.  Founder Pierre Haski says the decision to launch a print edition was an editorial and commercial one. Quoted by journalism.co.uk:

“We’ve decided to move to print to give our stories a second life. A large part of our 1.5 million-strong audience comes irregularly and therefore misses a large number of stories, which, although they remain freely available in archive, largely disappear once they leave the homepage. (…) The second reason is obviously economic diversification, with income from sales and advertising from print. We’ve had nine pages of advertising in the first issue, a good surprise as we had expected four.”

Interesting initiative, by all means. At least two important questions will get an answer soon. How will the pro/am-combination work out in print? And what are the chances of an online-only and ads-only medium in a subscription based, printed world? We’ll keep a close eye on Rue89.

“We need to harness the power digital technology to create open platforms for our work. We need to create a true NETWORK. Not in the TV network way — there is no single entity that pulls the strings, but rather we need to come together as a network of reporters, data miners, and analysts via open platform technology where all types of media can be searched, combined, sorted. And made accessible to publishers, educators and especially motivated software developers who will invent ways to elevate our work beyond our wildest imagination.”

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller knows exactly what the online, socially networked media landscape looks like. Read her full speech. She held it last week at the IRE Conference.

“On the internet, brand is a function, not design. If you don’t have any functionality, you don’t have a brand. And the new functionality is social, mobile or commerce, or a combination of any or all of those.”

I immediately thought that Mike Butcher (TechCrunch) – who was quoted here – had forgotten something important. If content is still king (something, I admit, people have started to think differently about), or at least something wortwhile, why on earth didn’t Butcher mention it as one of the functionalities? Content, in all sorts of quality and utility, is still the basis of most online brands, isn’t it?

So when I got the opportunity, I just asked him: haven’t you forgotten something? Not really, it turned out.

“Since when was news a pure function? News is content. Nice, but still content. Functionality is a valuable wrapper.”

Yep, if you look at it in this way, he’s got a point. Still, it remains hard to believe that content is without any value. So I told him that in a way this seemed to be not more than semantics. Without content, could there ever be any functionality? An empty garbage bin, that’s what it will turn out to be, I stated. Butcher:

“That’s the problem. The content is a junk commodity. The money is now in the bins ”

In short: content, being abundant and always available somewhere, has totally lost its value.

Still, for the editorially oriented people, it is a tough job realizing  that the only thing they are really good at is the worthless filling of a valuable wrapper. Translated: True/Slant is the brand, its functionality is determined out of its social, mobile or commercial performance. But not out of the content the T/S bloggers are putting in. What I just did here, was not more than deliver the junk commodity.

I think I’m in need of a good night’s rest.

Annika Lidne, (C) Disruptive Media

The first really powerful news outlet? No kidding, it’s the church! Interesting point of view from Annika Lidne, managing director of the Sweden based Disruptive Media (great company name by the way) this morning at the Nordic Local Media Conference in Stockholm.

Lidne says that hundreds of years ago already, the church not only had a religious function, but also a social and informative one. Exactly for those reasons the church – especially in small local communities – had a connecting role. “Sunday’s sermon was the social event of the week. The pulpit acted as today’s television, out of which not only God’s word was spread, but also the latest news. And afterwards, there was enough time to talk with each other about all the topics that were of mutual concern.”

Nowadays we are, at least on a local level, much less “connected”, says Lidne. Traditional media strengthen this feeling by having given news a totally new definition than was the case some 400 years ago in and around the church. Subjects like foreign and financial news instead of topics that are really touching people.
Lidne: “What nowadays is presented as need to know, is really only nice to know to most people. So what we will have to come up with is stories that are built upon a personal relevance. The stories that have been forgotten.”

Only in this way the local community can get back the feeling of mutual connectivity, Lidne says. “As used to be the case in churches.”

Lidne’s presentation can be viewed here.

Going Hyperlocal. How to combine the Skills of the professional Journalist with the knowledge of the audience. 10 Golden Rules. Exract from my presentation at the Community Oriented Media Conference, Mechelen 20 May 2010.

The turmoil around Facebook’s privacy policy seems to be a worldwide concern. But still, privacy is very much related to the history and culture of every single country – or even region. The very moment the national privacy settings are mixed up, people feel alienated.

The Netherlands, although a relatively liberal country, is highly privacy-sensitive. And much more so than countries like the United States or Libya. This became apparant right after last week’s plane crash near Tripoli, that killed more than a hundred people, 70 of whom were Dutch.

Not only the site where the plane crashed, but also the hospital where the sole survivor, a nine year old boy called Ruben, was treated, were easily accessible. Dutch journalists didn’t know what happened to them, but they all greeted the opportunity. So they had cameras in the hospital room, strolled through the personal belongings of the passengers, and interviewed Ruben at the moment he still was unaware of what exactly had happened.

Only to find out that their audiences weren’t ready for this kind of reporting. Leading newspaper De Telegraaf got loads of criticism from its readers because of the Ruben-interview, and the twitter account @telegraafboycot got thousands of followers before it was (temporarily) suspended. Public television station NOS had the same sort of reactions after broadcasting details that were considered too private by its audience. Politicians were unanimous in calling it hideous and loathsome.

Immediately after these incidents, Dutch journalism went back to “normal”. The only cameras at Ruben’s homecoming this weekend, had foreign logos.

Privacy is no math: what’s perfectly okay on CNN (even for Dutch viewers, that is), is still not accepted in Dutch media.

…or is it? Watch this Swedish example.

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The final touches for my book on cycling (in Dutch, in stores May 6th), have been the main reason for my absense on T/S the last couple of weeks. I hope I can make up by translating part of this book for you. It’s full of tips and tricks on buying, repairing and riding bikes and contains loads of anecdotes from my own experience. Furthermore, it helps you decide what clothes to wear, what food to eat and how to improve yourself as a cyclist.

The title of the book is just “Cycling”, although it might as well have been “No Excuse For Not Cycling”, as I spread 30-something well known excuses throughout the book. I’ve tried to debunk every one of them. A selection of them might be a good starter for national bicycle month.

1. Bad Weather
There is no such thing as bad weather for a cyclist. When it’s raining, the raindrops will get you wet; when the sun shines, your own sweat will do the trick. Either way, after a nice shower all your problems will be washed away. If it is too cold, just wear some extra clothing (don’t forget your overshoes). And if it is too hot, be sure to take a lot of water with you. After they finished their ride, complaining about the circumstances is a rare phenomenon among cyclists. Instead they will brag about the cold, the heat, the rain, the everything – in the mean time re-enjoying every meter of the ride they just finished.
2. I’ll make a longer trip tomorrow
Typical excuse from the excuse-specialist. Today is the day! Get up on your bike and take that ride. You’ll be happy at the end of it and you know what, you can still make that longer trip tomorrow.
3. I don’t know what to do with a flat tire
First of all: flat tires are an exception. I ride about 15,000 kilometers a year and have about three or four flat tires. Furthermore, if you always take a new tube with you, the changing is a piece of cake: it’s done in only 5 to 10 minutes. Other complications are very rare too, but be sure to take your mobile phone, so you can get assistance if things get really out of hand. Just like you would do while driving your car.
4. Cycling is tiring
It may look like it, but it isn’t the case. In fact, cycling gives you energy. The cyclist wins strength every day. Not only physically, also mentally. The harder the  effort, the sharper the mind. Your boss will be happy too: the more you ride, the better your performance at work.
5. The wind is always against me
Cycling is a lot like life: sometimes circumstances are in favor, sometimes they are against you. But never all the time. Especially if you ride a circle, your own direction will change more often than the wind will ever do. Mathematically spoken, there is as much wind in your face as there is in your back. But most of the time it is somewhere in between. If it is not blocked by something like a building or a forest. Not to speak of all the occasions that there is no wind at all. The person that keeps saying he always has the wind against him, will just have to start counting. On his bike, that is.
6. I don’t have my car for nothing
Hey, that’s true, you didn’t buy your car to leave it in the garage. Just like they didn’t invent trains, plains and space shuttles without reason. That’s precisely why bikes are around. They don’t compete with cars, because they have another purpose.
7. I don’t have the cash for a good bike
If you visit an average bicycle store, you can easily get the impression that you need an awful lot of money for some good biking. And that real achievements are only possible after donating a couple of thousand dollars for a bicycle and another one thousand for clothing and shoes. Not to speak about the computers that will show you the way through your neighbourhood. Nonsense. Most second hand bikes – the ones that can be found in the attic at your mother-in-law’s – will do. And if you don’t find one there, try Craigslist. Either way, you don’t have to spend much. Only be very sure the bike is still safe to ride on. And if, after a couple of months, your cycling ambition is still growing, there is enough time to visit the store where your dreambike is on sale. You will have had the advantage of having saved some more money.
8. First I have to go on a diet
Another one from the professional excuse-finder. If you feel you have gained too much weight, there is no better reason to take the bike. You’re losing time every day, so hop on your bike very quickly. You can always go on a diet afterwards. Be careful though to go cycling with too little nutrition. An athlete needs good food to be able to perform. Your body needs it. It is burned away in the action, so there’s no need to be afraid that you gain weight again.
9. I’m a woman
Cycling is as fun for women as it is for men. Moreover, men and women can do it very well together. For a young couple in love, there is no better way to spend their vacation than cycling through southern states.
10. It’s bad for my sperm production
A former world cycling champion once said that the only time his private parts felt badly, was outside of the cycling season. “Just ask my wife”, he was quoted by the interviewer. Moreover: cycling is historically strong in catholic parts of the world. And in China. Do I need to say more?