Monthly Archives: May 2007

Fotball og medierettigheter

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Norsk fotball floppet i Europa i fjor og landslaget sliter, men på hjemmebane er klubbfotballen mer populær enn noen gang. Med artikkelen Navet i fotballmaskinen, min første for ABC Nyheter, prøver jeg å se litt nærmere på en av årsakene til publikumstilstrømningen — måten klubbene og fotballforbundet forvalter medierettighetene på. I bunnen ligger en ekstremt detaljert avtale mellom de norske toppklubbene/forbundet og de som kjøper rettighetene, først og fremst TV 2/Telenor men også de som har kjøpt smulene (NRK og TVNorge har kjøpt rett til å vise bilder i nyhetssendinger, f.eks.). Avtalen er aldri blitt offentliggjort, men en trenger bare å se på mediemanualen (pdf-dokument) redaksjoner som vil dekke fotballkamper må forholde seg til, for å få en forståelse av detaljnivået (det markeres med tape på gulvet hvor TV-fotografene skal stå når intervjuer skal gjøres). Presseorganisasjonene har (lovlig sent) begynt å interessere seg for de presseetiske implikasjonene av denne symbiosen.

Interessant nok har det dukket opp en aktuell konfliktsak mellom Lyn/Vålerenga og TV 2 som illustrerer noe av kompleksiteten i avtaleverket.

Al Gore: “Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it”

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From Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason:

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It’s a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It’s a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets-through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas. (…) The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people-as Lincoln put it, “even we here”-are collectively still the key to the survival of America’s democracy. (From a Time excerpt.)

Highly recommended is Time’s analytical portrait. See also NYT book review.

UPDATE: Al Gore on The Daily Show.

Pooling election bloggers

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There will be no shortage of alternative coverage of the 2008 US presidential election. One example is Off the bus, where Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen team up to recruit around 40 bloggers to cover the candidates (one blogger is dedicated to following one candidate). The best posts will be featured on the Off the bus page. See Rosen explain the initiative in this video. Or read more about it.

Jeff Jarvis has his PrezVid, “The YouTube campaign 2008”. See also the Washington Post Channel 08 blog.

Recommended is also techPresident, a sort of web 2.0 portal/blog for the presidential race, complete with YouTube viewing statistics and a petition – who will be the most internet-friendly candidate?

Wallraff wallraffer igjen

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Günter Wallraff er blitt 64, men med parykk og uten bart ser han betraktelig yngre ut. Undercover-journalisten som ble berømt for sine avsløringer av Bild-Zeitungs metoder og av innvandreres arbeidskår i Vest-Tyskland, er tilbake på jobb. På oppdrag fra Die Zeit tar han for seg callsenterbransjen. Her er det tydeligvis nok å ta tak i; i ett callsenter settes Wallraff til å presse systemkuponger for lotto (!) på arbeidsledige og fattigfolk. I det andre dreier det seg om å selge en innrammet utskrift av en lovtekst som alle skjenkesteder skal ha på veggen. Teksten kan selvsagt lastes ned gratis fra nettet, men de callsenteransatte gir seg ut for å være fra myndighetene og truer kafevertene med bot hvis de ikke kjøper utskriften innrammet i en Ikea-ramme for 69 euro.

Det vil alltid være behov for en Wallraff. Flere bransjer vil bli wallraffet i tiden som kommer, lover han.

Artikkelen er hovedoppslaget i Die Zeits magasin, som relanseres denne uken etter at det ble lagt ned for noen år siden. Smått genialt å lansere med Wallraff: Hans legendestatus sikrer masse medieoppmerksomhet, temaet som tas opp er viktig, mange av leserne vil være godt voksne som husker Wallraff fra før. Noe å lære for norske magasinmakere.

OPPDATERING: NA24 Propaganda omtaler saken, men med svenske Dagens Industri som kilde. Pussig nok det, men verre er det at det er flere feil i den korte omtalen. Wallraff fikk ikke sparken, han hadde en prøvedag som endte med at han ikke fikk jobbtilbud. Deretter prøvde han seg i et annet callsenterfirma, der han jobbet tre dager. Og så er det Günter uten h, da.

Cultural arms race

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Researching a story on how cities and communities in Norway redefine and reorient themselves by funding culture-based initiatives, I stumbled across the conflict playing out over Glasgow’s future. Today the think-tank Demos published a report called The Dreaming City, by their own words “an experiment to open up Glasgow’ls future to the mass imagination of its citizens.” Among the conclusions, reported by the BBC:

The report argued that recent UK urban regeneration was based on an unsustainable ‘cultural arms race’, with cities competing against each other to attract investment and tourism.

The Glasgow city council didn’t really like the report, and a spokesman called it “bizarre” and an insult to the city’s people.

Demos’ approach is anyway interesting: They have involved citizens in a storytelling project, claiming that it is the first attempt to imagine the future of a city in this way. As more and more cities try to find the right role for culture and “creative industries”, the issue of legitimacy and popular participation is certainly important to consider. A one-sided top-down approach by elites in love with the Bilbao story would be the least advisable…

Public service broadcasting – online future or no future

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How can and should public service broadcasting redefine itself in the online era? That was the topic discussed by media scholars from several European countries at a seminar in Bergen a few weeks ago. Now a documentation of the event has been published by Vox Publica, a web magazine edited at the University of Bergen (I’m project manager/editor). The introductory article outlines the different approaches that were debated, and you’ll find links there to seven articles, one for each contribution, with a text summary plus audio recording and slideshows from most of the participants. Hopefully this can inspire the ongoing debates about public service broadcasting across national borders in Europe.

Photo stories

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Web-based multimedia production is getting more and more interesting both for professionals and amateurs, what with tools such as Soundslides. No excuse for textbased purism anymore!

But there is still room for the classic documentary photo story as well. A couple of new examples: Annie Leibovitz chronicles the construction of the New York Times building on Manhattan. Men are still required to build skyscrapers! Vanity Fair has also put both sets of photos on separate pages – part I and part II.

In Time Magazine, Jacob Silberberg and Thomas Dworzak show us The Two Sides of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, there is a whole lot of Flickr innovation going on. Flickrvision is just beautiful, and FlickrSLiDR makes it ridiculously easy to embed slideshows on your own page.

Credible individuals

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Credibility no longer rests with TV channels or newspapers. Nobody relates to the media brands anymore. The credible individual will take over, and we will even get a football-style transfer market for the best of them. Not my words, but my notes from Ben Hammersley’s presentation in Bergen last Thursday (more notes here). Right before Hammersley I heard Irshad Manji talk about her Project Ijtihad, and suddenly the connection clicked in. Hammersley’s suggestions for that role of credible storyteller were Anderson Cooper and Jon Stewart. He could just as well have chosen Manji.

There are three qualities that are common to all the best storytelling on the web, Hammersley claimed: It must be personal (speak directly to you), have personality (the credible individual has a clear point of view that is well known to the audience) and bring perspective. Instead of the typically fragmented news story, the story is presented with all relevant context about what has happened before in the issue at hand.

Manji has all these qualities. In fact, her point of view is the vehicle that transports her through all the different communication situations. From conference presentation to TV interview to the website to her own documentary productions and book projects. She juggles all these appearances very professionally, and so her main point couldn’t be communicated more effectively: Democratic forces need to be just as well versed in media strategy as the jihadists. As examples she told us about translating her book into Arabic, Persian and Urdu and posting it on the web for free downloading (200.000 downloads of the Arabic version so far, reactions from readers in Middle East countries who point out the privacy advantage of this distribution instead of the more public physical book), posting a cleric’s defense of interfaith marriage which is then circulated by Muslim women in Europe.

The media need to go back to basics, to their original mission: Tell news stories. And today the web is the best place to do that, Hammersley said. Everything moves to the web, so old media need to give their web presence priority. For at TV channel, that would mean to use traditional TV as trailers for their web pages. And what should we find there? Somewhat jokingly, I thought, he proposed to model news storytelling on the web after heist movies. A team assembles, gets mission explained, we see a flash forward of how the mission should be accomplished, mission is carried out, the team receives a new mission. Apparently, the BBC is working on a format like this to be presented soon. When pressed about examples, Hammersley mentioned: MediaStorm and Magnum. Enjoy.

Bok og Bibliotek og 2.0

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Mari Toft har tatt over som redaktør for tidsskriftet Bok og Bibliotek, og har nå sin første utgave ute (bladet er nedlastbart i sin helhet som pdf). Her er det mye å hygge seg med, bl.a. artikler av Cory Doctorow, Eirik Newth og Morten Harper. Noen lenker verdt å notere:

  • Total Recorder. Tar opp enhver lyd som spilles av på datamaskinen din, inkludert nettradio, skriver Thomas Gramstad.
  • Lokalhistorisk wiki i Stavanger: Stavanger bibliotek og kulturhus har fått 300.000 kroner av ABM-utvikling til prosjektet.
  • Bergensband: Bergen offentlige bibliotek har samlet bergensband med MySpace-sider.
  • 2.0-samtalen: Bibliotekarer drøfter framtiden.

Og så har Toft en rimelig klar programerklæring i lederartikkelen:

Biblioteket skal tenke på brukerne. Så skal det tenke igjennom sin egen rolle. Dernest kan det gjerne skjenke en tanke, hvis det er en til overs, til forfatterne av åndsverk. Men utgiverne? Deres ve og vel skal ikke være bibliotekenes bekymring. Utlånslogikken fra trykte verk kan ikke uten videre overføres på digitale. Nå er det nok sant at utgiverleddet kan være en truet art. Men skal det være bibliotekenes oppgave å verne om et fordyrende og forvanskende mellomledd som trues av utviklingen?

“NRK-arkiver som hovedregel gratis”

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Trond Giske presenterer stortingsmelding om allmennkringkasting her i Bergen og kommer med følgende gladmelding: NRK-arkivene skal “som hovedregel være gratis”. “De fleste av oss oppfatter at vi har betalt for innholdet allerede gjennom lisensen,” sier Giske. Umiddelbart kommer naturligvis et unntak for programmer som utløser betalingsforpliktelser på grunn av rettigheter, som musikk og drama. Likevel, gratis som hovedregel er en viss klargjøring i forhold til dagens situasjon. Se mer om forbeholdene i meldingen.

I meldingens del om arkivene viser det seg at NRK ikke skal få noen ekstra midler til å digitalisere arkivene.

NRKs aktuelle programtilbud – “ferskvaren” – skal ligge gratis ute på nettet i en uke.

NRK skal fortsatt få ha reklame på sine nettsider, men ikke rettet mot barn. Reklame på tekst-TV blir forbudt for NRK. Reklame foran TV-klipp på nettet blir ikke lov. Reklamen skal “ikke forringe allmennkringkastingspreget”. Akkurat det skal det bli interessant å se hvordan man skal kontrollere.

Salgsvirksomheten NRK har skal tydeligere skilles fra allmennkringkastingstilbudet. Viktig også: allmennkringkastingsoppdraget skal også gjelde internett og mobil.

Giske varsler en bred høring om en ny allmennkringkastingsplakat som skal gjøre klart hva som er NRKs oppdrag.

Oppdatering: Stortingsmeldingen i fulltekst.