Out With A Bang

There is a real danger that me and my No1 fan could ‘enjoy’ a tennis match here, so I’ll say no more.

http://www.4ip.org.uk/blog/4ips_first_project_out_the_door_ncfc/

In fairness, it did get me to thinking about why we were able to tick a few of 4iP’s boxes this winter. And I think part of the answer lies in the title.

Sorry, their title…

‘Rethinking Public Service Media’.

Now, the danger is that I end up being some C4 cheerleader in all this, but that – to my mind – is why ‘Backchat’ ticked a few of their boxes.

Because that was simply me re-thinking the way that I delivered my own ‘media’ – www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity – to my public.

And given the urgency of my own personal times, it was very much a case of ‘How the f*ck do we get this to work..?’ It’s that base; that straight-forward.

Me following an old-fashioned, ‘old media’ model of staffing up both our ‘offices’ in Ipswich and Colchester didn’t work; took us to the very brink of financial ruin; where still we teeter.

Minus both lads – and minus a deal this summer – we had about six weeks to think how we could source decent, compelling content that was both free and engaging; and allowed my public to find a voice.

But, above all, to find me. Or rather, for me to find them. For me to try and re-engage with my old Evening News audience.

I walk down Loddon High St and the postman and the chip-shop owner will say: ‘What’s going on with the Canaries, Rick?’ – all ‘Backchat’ does is to turn that question – one asked every day of journalists the world over – into free content.

‘What’s going on at the council, Pauline… when they going to catch that mugger, Jerry… where do you think the economy will be in six months, Robert..?’

When any of us actually get out there and mingle, people want to know your opinions; occasionally, they even respect those opinions. But now they’ve got you there, in the flesh, in the street, then they can save themselves 40p by asking you the question themselves… ‘That kid from Arsenal coming on loan, Rick..?’

And this is me re-inventing the way that I service my public’s media needs.

They just don’t have to stop me in the street any more.

How do we do it? By picking up two, simple tools and rubbing them together; in our case Twitter and Jaiku; put together with me in the midst and it makes content. Free content. Which makes page views. Which makes advertisers happy if their banner ad is seen more often.

This is not rocket science; as it isn’t to rub two sticks together and make a fire. You just need that little bit of kindling that, perhaps, a journalist can offer; he can grease the wheels; oil the works with the odd insight here, the odd new fact there.

But all of this is re-thinking the way we deliver ‘media’. In an instant; in a conversational form; to 140 characters.

It just so happens that it is to a niche, football audience.

But, for me, the trick – and, ideally, the bigger picture – then comes with the appliance of said ‘new media’ science.

And, time and time again, I drill ‘Backchat’ and every other little digital tool and device I stumble upon to our equivalent of EveryBlock; www.mylocalwriter.com

I saw one in action on Friday afternoon; I’m not about to spoil their surprise. But, boy oh boy, if I was the Newspaper Society and I was worried about 65 BBC VJs wandering across my lawn…

OK, so if we bolted a ‘Backchat’ screen onto www.mylocalwriter.com/loddon/NR14 what could it give me if I was that local writer? If that was the community that I had volunteered to ‘curate’ on a part-time basis if the Beccles & Bungay Journal went off to meet its maker…

Mmm… well, if we ran some hash-tag/postcode thinking through it then the headmistress could ‘publish’ the news that the school was closing for the day due to a boiler breakdown; Jenny could ‘tweet’ back to warn our NR14 community that there was an accident in Thurton dip and the journey was likely to take 25 minutes longer into Norwich this morning folks…

… so there’s an instant way of breaking news to those within our MyLocalWriter.com ‘fold’; likewise I could ‘Backchat’ the main points of the parish council meeting; the new library opening times; am-dram play opinions… local football club scores; Loddon Grasshoppers Under-18s 2, Yarmouth Swifts 0…

All the time, the geographically tight community that we could gather around www.mylocalwriter.com/loddon/nr14/backchat could swap little ’stories’ in an instant; stories that we could then all share… all benefit from… because it’s good to talk… good to feel involved… good to feel part of a local community.

That we could all ‘Backchat…’ together.

Which, I presume, must just about fall under the remit of ‘public service media’ – that we can, via one simple journalistic device, deliver feelings of togetherness, of community, of involvement, of engagement.

Particularly if, unlike TS10, it works for every postcode in the country.

There is one, final point to be made about that title ‘Rethinking Public Service Media’; by accident or design – and you to suspect the latter – C4/4iP have dropped the word ‘broadcaster’.

Perhaps, as they too desperately look to re-invent themselves, C4 – via 4iP – don’t see themselves as a broadcaster any longer.

Most of us own a mobile phone with a camera; we’re all broadcasters now.

And, yes, to an extent we’re all ‘media’ now; but that’s when I look for my high horse and suggest that 99% of us are citizen publishers, not journalists. Not in the Channel Four News sense of the term.

So if that ‘public service’ remit means that C4 feel the need to find a higher purpose to their media lives going forward, then maybe bringing some of that journalistic thinking to their future content provision might prove an interesting way to go – particularly if you’re going cap in hand to Government for funding, perhaps then you need to re-invent yourself in a new light; in a different guise.

What’s the purpose to what we’re doing? Where’s the service we provide to the public if we’re not a broadcaster any more? We need to re-think the way that we service the public’s ‘media’ needs.

And, just perhaps, one of those ‘media’ needs might be to know that there’s a smash in Thurton dip – and the old boiler up at Loddon Junior School is on the blink again.

‘If the project had been based around community building for under-18s football, womens football, etc, etc, I think it would of been much more worthwhile…