When it comes to understanding “We Media” – the rapidly emerging, paradigm-shifting chrysalis of citizens inexorably transforming themselves from passive consumers into active creators of news and information – there’s a huge fissure within Big Media. Some get it, some don’t – and some never will.
That apparent split was clearly on display at the recent We Media (“Behold the Power of Us”) conference. The confab, aimed at bringing together “the trailblazers, leaders, movers and shakers of the media vanguard,” was organized by a non-profit media-technology-society think tank called The Media Center.
Held at the world headquarters of the Associated Press in New York City, the program included “a series of conversations” on the phenomenon of mass collaboration, focusing on such topics as citizen journalism, activism and democracy. Al Gore, chairman of Current TV and (lest it be forgotten) former Vice President of the United States delivered the keynote address. Surprisingly for someone who invented the Internet, (but not for someone who now owns a cable network,) Gore said television would remain America’s primary means of communication well into the future.
But the essence of the event – and of the ongoing argument between the self-styled media vanguard and the army of citizen Visigoths swarming at their gates – was personified before Gore’s speech, at an early morning panel featuring, among others, CBS Digital Media president Larry Kramer and BBC World Service director Richard Sambrook. The extent to which the BBC gets it – and therefore is poised not only to survive but also to thrive – soon became clear. So did the extent to which CBS, despite recent efforts to adopt certain aspects of citizen media in language and form, still doesn’t really have a clue.
The panelists, including AP head Tom Curley and the ever-redoubtable Farai Chideya of NPR and popandpolitics.com began by paying lip service to the necessity and value of trust, collaboration and authenticity “˜relationships’ between “˜We’ (consumer/creator/audience/citizen media) and “˜Them’ (Big Media). Kramer, who claimed he was intent on making CBS News “˜more relevant’ by opening it up through such half-hearted innovations as the Public Eye “˜omblogsman’ and Andy Rooney podcasts. He described such efforts as putting “a first toe in the water.”
Sambrook, on the other hand, began by declaring “We don’t own the news anymore,” and went on to detail what he pointedly described as “bigger than a movement – not a toe in the water, not product development – but a fundamental realignment.” To Sambrook, the news has become “democratized,” and as a result, “It’s become a whole new ball game” for Big Media concerns such as the Beeb. His conclusion: “We must do something completely different.”
Sambrook rightly described the measure of any news organization as “the quality and depth of its relationship with the public.” Digital technology is now fundamentally changing that relationship. Sambrook and other BBC executives believe they “must embrace that change.” Social (or citizen) media, says Sambrook, “used to exist on the margins, but is very quickly becoming central. We’re at the tipping point right now.”
As a result, the entire BBC is now preparing for that embrace, moving from seeing its role as being “a one-way broadcaster to a moderator to a facilitator,” says Sambrook. The ways in which the BBC will seek to add value in the future will also change. Sambrook outlined three keys to the BBC’s emergent value proposition:
- 1) Connecting audiences
2) Verification of news
3) Analysis, explanation and context addition.
The BBC, according to Sambrook, is now “in the middle of reorganizing and reprioritizing itself for a fully-digital, on-demand environment. On-demand is our future.”
Such a total transformation, says Sambrook, requires “a huge cultural shift” on the part of Big Media, a shift to “thinking about content in a 360 degree manner.” Executives like him must now start thinking about “how to take content forward and allow the public to engage with it, alter it, and so on.”
Fundamental change also requires a certain fearlessness, of course and a real willingness to trust the public — both qualities lacking from the current CBS approach. Instead of trusting its audience, CBS evidently fears it and still wants to “filter” and control its contributions to the marketplace of ideas.
Such hidebound thinking is particularly typical of Big Broadcast Media, where the dominant metaphor has long been “Master Control.” But the paradox of social media, its counter-intuitive heart, seems to be that the only way to influence the future is to let go of the illusion of control, and instead to trust the audience and embrace the change. Big Media outfits that already get it – like the BBC – are poised to prosper; those that still don’t – like CBS – better start swimming or they’ll sink like a stone.
After all, trust is the emerging value proposition. And if CBS doesn’t trust the public, why should we trust CBS?
