His name is Aral – or rather, @Aral – and tonight he could be found waxing lyrical about the launch of the new Apple iPhone 3GS… in a lot less than 140 characters as his excitement mounted. The penny was starting to drop as to just what this baby could do now…

aralShoot/edit/share video with just your iPhone 3GS. Oh, yes! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie

aralAwesome, “send to YouTube” feature is gonna rock! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie

araliPhone 3GS: 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, 3MP autofocus/tap-to-focus/low-light/auto-macro (~10cm) camera + 30fps VIDEO, ~2x faster, OpenGL|ES

Me, being the sports hack at heart, doesn’t ‘get’ any of the first post.

Whatever, is my instant reaction.

Though even I twig that when the ‘S’ stands for speed, the new iPhone is likely to rock more than just @Aral’s world.

The little phrase, however, that I do ‘get’ is the ‘Send To YouTube’ function.

Because as muchas we might debate endlessly about whether we’re now digital journalists, citizen bloggers or this hybrid bast*rd in between – the ‘jogger’ of the NYT’s worst imaginings – that ‘Send To YouTube’ function now unites us all in one regard.

We’re all digital broadcasters.

And YouTube now looks set to be the default channel of our production choice.

And for the traditional, legacy broadcasters, that’s not good news.

It is, however, the news that Anthony Lilley long ago predicted – that there would be an ‘explosion’ in media participation – one that, you sense, even now is only just beginning.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

For everyone else, of course, the Internet is like so many Christmas’ come early. ‘Heh, Mom, look what I did with my mobile… cool…’

I had it on the way home from a karate grading on Sunday with my nine-year-old; that his best pal Jac – all of 11 – had uploaded his own ’story’ onto YouTube; that he had become his own ‘movie’ producer. And director. And star.

I still heartily recommend Anthony Lilley’s piece…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

There are lines therein that underpin and explain so much of what is unfolding around us at such a frightening rate of knots; all-but drowning those of us that once had command of our audience.

When we knew where they were at 4.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon when the paper boy deigned to show… or at 6pm on a Thursday night when Anglia News took to our screens.

Back then we had no option but to sit on the sofa and watch Kevin and Helen; now the rules of the media game have fundamentally changed – our Jac is busily making his own entertainment for his own little audience as opposed to mutely sitting down in front of the ads on CITV.

Here we go… the four pars to ponder… and to really take to heart.

“The coming of global broadband linkage and the web has changed that landscape forever.

“In the process, as has been discussed above, an explosion of participation in media is beginning.

“This world has flipped from a state of affairs where scarcity of content was the norm to the landscape we see now – with many more content creators, aggregators and owners out there.

“In addition, the availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience…”

That’s our Jac – ‘people formely known as the audience’. An 11-year-old making up his own stories and broadcasting them on the Web. Cruically, at a time of day – you suspect – when the suits at ITV would be desperately hoping that he was adding another bum on their seats…

But what’s also very interesting is the way that new players are emerging into this landscape; people who don’t arrive with the ‘legacy’ that besets so many an Old Media player – be it in the shape of either a print press hall or a TV studio in Leeds, Mr Demi Moore and now Sir Bob Geldof are coming to this landscape in a sufficiently lithe and nimble shape to make a monkey or two of their traditional rivals.

And just as the level of creation and participation has now been game-changed forever, so the means of distribution lends itself wholly to the non-legacy entrants…

http://www.digitalmissive.com/about-your-entertainment-the-retail-king-is-dead-long-live-the-digital-king/

‘From stationary collecting and archiving (our favorite books, vinyls, and VHS tapes), to sharing and communicating about our entertainment picks anywhere, anytime (now all in a single format – digital), Apple et al fundamentally altered the business model of how we find, purchase, and consume entertainment content and devices, period….’

All you need to do there is swap the word ‘entertainment’ for ‘news’ and the two pieces of the puzzle start to fit – especially under the light of Anthony’s Magic Lantern.

Because this piece is fascinating..

http://www.sarahlacy.com/sarahlacy/2009/02/ugc-just-a-loss-leader-in-the-end.html

Not so much for the thoughts on the value – or not – of UGC, rather what Ashton Kutcher and his company Katalyst Media are up to next… and whether or not for Ashton and Katalyst you could read Sir Bob and Ten Alps here…

Or if not here, Norfolk here, on the lap-tops and iPhones of Ulster; that having cut their teeth on Kent CC TV, Bob and the boys now fancy getting right down with the Northern Ireland natives… and going very, very local…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/19/mediabusiness-musicindustry

This line is pure Lilley: ‘In the age of the internet, the notion of television itself is as archaic as the word wireless – even if that has been reinvented for the digital age…

As are the thoughts of Demi’s OH. His views on the very notion of ‘TV’ chimes exactly with Messrs Lilley and Geldof..

‘The wake up call for Ashton? Five years ago, if you made people chose to get rid of their TVs or computers, most of the ones he knows would have said computers. “Now, you ask the same question and hands down everyone would get rid of the TV. You don’t need it anymore…’

There is, of course, one final, crucial piece in the jigsaw that Ms Lacy’s excellent piece touches on.

Advertising. And where next for the ads that used to sit on Ulster TV.

Because both Geldof and Kutcher have one, other thing that unites them – they have an individual ‘brand’ that is pure 2009.

In 2008 maybe – just maybe – one or two of the bolder advertisers might have run with GaryVaynerchuk TV via the wine buff’s blog http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=157

A year and a credit crunch later and my best hunch would be that the ad suits will put their ad dollars with a legacy-lite and Twitter-proven indiviudal ‘brand’ that they already know and trust from another age; somewhere they feel safe; insulated from the worst excesses of UGC.

And on that front, it may well prove to be a wise investment – banking on Sir Bob and Ashton to be the next big things in what we once called ‘TV’.

Given it was all conducted on Chatham House rules and given my knowledge of licence fee slicing and switch-over surplusses is sketchy at best, it probably needs to be a case of broader brush-strokes anyway.

The stage, by and large, belonged to the big beasts of TV; that – to me – appeared to be one of the primary concerns of the gathering; to work out who was ever going to fill the 6pm regional news slot on a ‘Channel 3′ – the one that used to be the province of many an ex-Evening News pal on Anglia TV.

Fortunately, the man from OfCom has a plan – a plan that he sketched out before us; and would repeat again elsewhere…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/28/ofcom-ed-richard-local-tv-news

He even had some numbers; a £40-£60 million price tag… money that the BBC today swiftly tried to ring-fence. It ain’t coming out of our pot… was the thrust of the BBC Trust’s argument.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/30/bbc-trust-michael-grade-itv-local-news

All of which had me thinking back to Mark Potts’ recent piece on ‘Herding Cats’…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/04/herding-cats.html

How the notion of bolting the BBC – in, of course, their new-found spirit of ‘co-operation’ – in alongside whatever rump is left of the ITV’s regional news arm and then splicing in whichever of the regional newspaper groups ‘fits’ with that particular, regional TV fiefdom in the hope that they’ll all somehow get on, appears a mite fanciful…

Why not throw in some content from the local councils and complete the ’set’?

These people don’t get on; they don’t mix. And I’m not even sure that when faced with a climate of ‘Adapt or die…’ they’ll be able to bury the hatchet anywhere else but in eachother’s back.

Certainly that was Mark’s experience of trying to work with newspaper consortia… And I’m not sure ITV, the BBC, ITN, Press Association, or whoever else came along to the party would prove any different to AN Other newspaper group. It’s not in their genes to mix.

‘Getting newspapers to agree to work together on anything is well-nigh impossible,’ Mark recalls.

‘I worked for New Century Network… Nine big newspaper companies that could barely agree on when and where to meet, much less on the substantive issues that have turned out to be increasingly fatal to the print business.

‘After that, I worked for Classified Ventures, another newspaper consortium, and saw the same fractious behavior torpedo best-laid plans. It’s just the way newspaper companies are. They don’t play well with others—even within the same ownership group, much with other newspaper companies…’

And TV companies?

But I have a bigger problem with the whole notion of “independently funded news consortia” riding to the rescue of regional news.

Cos, for me, the web doesn’t do regional; it does not recognise such parochial boundaries as Anglia, TyneTees or Granada. And nor does the punter want regional.

Or even ‘local’. Given that my current ‘local’ news on be it either BBC or ITV stretches from Beccles to Bedford and all points of the East Anglian compass in between… when all I’d probably watch would be the odd, five-minutes of Loddon TV. With a dash of Norwich TV and Beccles TV sandwiched in between.

For me, thinking that six or seven regional news ‘patches’ supplied by six or seven local media consortia can ride to our rescue is simply a case of big media and big Government trying to find a solution that fits with their ‘big’ view of the world. And imposing that ‘big’ answer on the rest of us.

And that’s what you can’t do. Impose. Not on MySpace. My web space. My web life.

Don’t dictate to me. Or decide for me. This is what you’re getting. At Six O’Clock. On Channel 3. News from Bedford when you live in a sleepy town just outside Beccles.

Big is bust; big is broken.

Small is the new big. And what the web embraces, encourages and empowers is the individual – ask Susan Boyle. By the end of that week she was a bigger ‘brand’ than both ITV and Britain’s Got Talent. Because 19 million individual YouTube viewers had taken her to their hearts.

It is a lesson that HM Government needs to grasp quickly – and use to its advantage.

Because individual empowerment comes cheap; we can empower and enable a new army of village and postcode ‘TV reporters for £50,000; not £50 million. Tis the price of one starter pack.

A ‘home-brew’ kit for every NUJ and UNITE member out there who fears for both for their family’s future and for the future of an industry that they still love.

It’s cheap because I already own a mobile phone; makes me a producer of video content. Likewise I own a lap-top. Makes me a digital broadcaster.

No, I’m not a news reporter. Football’s my thing. But Linda on www.darwenreporter.com does news; so does James at TowcesterNews, etc, etc…

It’s just them, their hyper-local community, their mobile phone and their lap-top. And no herding cats.

For me, all concerned need to go back and read Anthony Lilley’s visionary piece on a now-aborted Public Service Platform…

http://www.openmedianetwork.org.uk/anewapproach/default.htm

Commissioned by OfCom, therein lies some big, 21st Century truths; telling insights that don’t bode well for anyone thinking that there is a ‘big’ answer to our small news needs; that we can re-impose ourselves on what was once our audience… that those in possession of ‘closed technologies’ will form the centre-piece of local news survival…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

This is telling; about how any new ‘consortia’ imposed upon us all from above would have to clear new hurdles in terms of its brand development…

“Traditionally, the development of a well-established brand in the media ecology has been a slow and expensive process [er, between £40-£60 million...] - particularly where direct to consumer propositions are concerned.

“However, more recently, brands such as Google and eBay have developed not simply as a result of external marketing and branding exercises but as a result of the way in which they have offered services which have effectively harnessed and resonated with the essential participatory nature of the interactive, networked media…

That line is worth repeating: ‘resonated with the essential participatory nature of the interactive, networked media…

Networks that don’t stop at the border between TyneTees and Yorkshire; what resonates with people these days? Being empowered to participate in the conversation that is news; to join this new, small cottage industry that the likes of Linda at www.darwenreporter.com are pioneering out of one small town in Lancashire.

Last September we again let Anthony Lilley and his Magic Lantern shed some light on the current gloom; backpackdave08 was that month’s Susan Boyle…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=143

Once again, the lessons were there to be had…

“The availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience… “

‘Low cost digital production…’ That’s a mobile phone.

‘Post-production technologies…’ That’s YouTube. [And it's Mark and Matt from bestbefore.tv; it's AudioBoo, etc...]

‘By the people formerly known as the audience…’ That’s backpackdave08. [And Susan Boyle... ]

There is one, final point to this idea that the future of news is small; and is networked; and never in a month of Sundays needs £60 mill to fulfill.

It’s which way, I, as politician would want to lean.

Because backpackdave08 and those of his FaceBook generation ilk are, in every likelihood, the kind of constituents who hold the key to my re-election.

It’s the whole Obama thing; that you have to digitally engage with your voters; get to where they are currently leading their lives without us.

And if I was, say, Andy Burnham, and someone in my Greater Manchester constituency opted to take a leaf out of our Linda’s book and – perhaps with their GMG redundancy cash – took the same leap of faith that we all have and launched www.leighreporter.com, I’d be very interested in digitally engaging with that audience…

Particularly if I knew that I could, say, add a # tag to a Leigh postcode and one #WN7 Twitter later, I was publising my every policy thought and voting deed to the people who really mattered to me – my constituents – I’d be looking at the virtues of small in a wholly different light.

Because faced with the choice of trying to get my say once a month on some unwieldy ChannelM/BBCNorthWest/Trinity/PA type consortium or participating in a daily, digital conversation with the community that could gather around the EveryBlocks that make up www.leighreporter.com I know how I’d spend my time.

And it wouldn’t be herding cats.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/25/itv.ofcom

Even if the numbers are slightly eye-watering, there was a very real sense that this was in the wind. Like everyone else, ITV can’t make the numbers add up. Their world – our world – is all but disintegrating. The game’s up; the show’s over. At least as far as Anglia (East) and Anglia (West) are concerned.

For the people of Norwich, here comes the news from your region. ‘A man from Milton Keynes was today bailed to appear before Buckingham magistrates…. etc, etc…’

Local news? My a*se, would be the view from the Royle Family sofa.

And then this…

http://egrommet.net/2008/09/09/credit-where-it-is-due/

Good piece; though I would argue that ‘backpackdave08′ is a citizen publisher, not a citizen journalist.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=41

We can all publish, we can all write… does that make us all journalists? Mmm. But anyway, credit the bloke… here he is: http://www.youtube.com/user/backpackdave08

But the really interesting line out of Glyn’s blog post is the number… 500,000.

‘Yesterday I had a whinge about the BBC not giving credit to backpackdave08 for his video of Noel Gallagher being clattered on stage, which this morning had been seen by over 500,000 viewers…’

Over 500,000 viewers. Clearly that number has been helped by the world and his wife embedding links into his clip – with or without due credit – but the point is, does the Anglia (East) breakfast time bulletin actually pull in 500,000 viewers with such ease?

And for a whole new – and departed – audience out there, which better fits with their concept of news? News from Milton Keynes magistrates or some lad with a mobile catching Noel getting twatted at the V-Festival?

And for that same audience, which suits their means of access to news better? Watching a 7.30am breakfast bulletin on TV – or watching a YouTube clip on their moby?

And if I’m an advertiser aiming to get in touch with that elusive yoouuufff market, where am I going to concentrate my efforts? Particularly when money is tight? ITV Anglia or backpackdave08 and his kind?

All of which brings us right back to a document written by Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern fame – http://www.openmedianetwork.org.uk/anewapproach/default.htm

For me it still deserves a wider airing. In it there are some real gems; some real insight as to the way that backpackdave08 is part of the future of TV; accept that, and, for me, it helps to explain why OfCom might be treading the path it is; why if the traditional means of newspaper distribution is broken beyond repair, that of traditional TV is not too far behind either.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

And, in particular…

“The coming of global broadband linkage and the web has changed that landscape forever.

“In the process, as has been discussed above, an explosion of participation in media is beginning.

“This world has flipped from a state of affairs where scarcity of content was the norm to the landscape we see now – with many more content creators, aggregators and owners out there.

“In addition, the availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience… “

Brilliant. Brilliant – that one line: “The availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience… “

‘Low cost digital production…’ That’s a mobile phone.

‘Post-production technologies…’ That’s YouTube.

‘By the people formerly known as the audience…’ That’s backpackdave08.

And that’s the world that OfCom is trying to make sense of; likewise, that’s the world that the NUJ has got to understand if it’s ever to stop fighting yesterday’s wars.

We’ve lost; the audience has won. Move on.

But the more I read it, the more gems you find. With the same on-going proviso – that you read it through the eyes of a wood-stainer. For whether by accident or design, it bangs nail after nail on the head.

Or at least gives some great starting points for a discussion.

This baby, for example.

“Our use of media is shifting to find a new balance between the creation and distribution of content as we have known it in the age of mass media and the active participation of citizens.

“We are entering the age of “our media” – where the communication of ideas amongst groups and the sharing of content are at the heart of what’s going on…”

Spot on. The new balance between the distribution of content as we have known it and the active participation of citizens… Very good. Cos that’s new media gold – how to crack that interaction without moderation nut. As it stands, most of us have discovered only new media green on that score.

Am I going to run a messageboard community off www.myfootballwriter.com and spend my life enslaved to a moderating screen as anonymous 14-year-olds from their bedrooms Ipswich have a pop at Norwich…? Er, no.

Not as a responsible publisher with a family-friendly brand to protect. A post for another time, but that tide is on the turn was the feeling from both the floor and the platform of Paul’s JEECamp the other day.

I’d also take a different view in terms of the age of “our media”. No surprise given the fact we’re running www.myfootballwriter.com and www.mylocalwriter.com, but I’d say it was more the age of “my media” – something, you presume, Shane and his myTelegraph set-up would concur with.

This bit is good. Particularly if you insert the word ‘newspaper’ into the mix.

“We already have a splendid system of media distribution using the mass media technologies of television, film, radio and, to some extent, the first generation of the web.

“Indeed, broadband networks have the added effect of improving this environment still further by facilitating access to media on-demand.

“But even this change from a scheduled world of media scarcity to a plentiful world of traditional media available on-demand represents a significant challenge to the assumptions and models of mass media players…

Newspaper hats on and two phrases leap out - “media on-demand” and “a scheduled world of media scarcity“, ie I want my news now and not when the paper-boy deigns to finally show and that “scheduled world”, one that for 400-odd years has been enslaved to the deadlines of a print press. And as such was able to keep media scarce.

And that’s a big, big word in this digital age of ours. Cos if media is scarce then it has a value. Simple supply and demand; keep supply scarce and the demand will push the price up.

To my mind – and that of Clay Shirky – the demand for media is not the problem. Everyone still wants a good read, just as they still want to listen to good music, etc, etc…

It’s the supply side that’s the problem. Media is everywhere. News is instant and universal. And free.

“Traditional media are at the zenith of their powers when they are distributing information and providing entertainment.

“These are powerful human needs; but they are not sufficient for life in the 21st century as the force of globalisation flatten our world. We are not in the information age; that has passed. We’re entering the networked, learning age…”

Sit down with a bank in these current, credit-crunched climate – and I suspect this will apply just as much to TrinityMirror, Archant, the LA Times, etc, etc, as much as it will to me and www.mylocalwriter.com – and that’s our biggest, biggest problem. Proving value.

If I can get this for free, on the web, what’s the value in your newspaper? Or, indeed, your website? Somewhere in all the recent talk of share prices halving, that fundamental thought is going through the minds of the markets. Where’s the value? When media was scarce, yeh, sure I get it… Now it’s everywhere. And costs me nothing. Where’s the value?

Because the ’scarcity of media’ applies just as equally to the distribution of advertising as it does to the distribution of editorial content. For 400-odd years, there was only one local advertising platform in town – and that ad only ever got as far as the furthest paper-boy.

Now we’re in this ‘networked’ age and that ad doesn’t need a paper boy to carry it; advertising ain’t scarce anymore, that’s everywhere too. Where’s the value in that quarter page ad? Heh, and I’ll keep myself in the newspaper boat – where’s the value in that banner ad? What’s so special about you? Where’s your added value?

And for all of us the answer we have to urgently hope lies in that one word – that not only are we in this networked age, but we’re in this “learning” age…

Because if information is everywhere, what it actually means is still – thankfully – quite scarce. Or rather those that actually know what that information means are still quite scarce; those that can add the ‘learning’ to a football score, an on-line police rap sheet, a roadside death in Iraq, and all those other bland, bald pieces of information that don’t come with education attached.

That’s why I look at www.everyblock.com with huge admiration – in all but one, key regard. I want to learn from it, not be informed by it. Information is everywhere; learning isn’t… what do I learn from a hygiene report? A police crime stat? I want the analysis, the colour, the background – and I want it from a source that I respect and trust.

That’s the value.

One night last autumn I discovered I had 24-hours in which to submit my final proposal for this year’s Knight News Challenge; boy was the midnight oil burned.

But in my hour of desperate need, I found a quote from Bill Keller as he warned that for all this explosion of information on the Internet, the supply of reliable news reporting was dwindling.

“What is absent from the vast array of new media outlets is, first and foremost, the great engine of news-gathering – the people who witness events, ferret out information, supply context and explanation.”

There’s your scarcity; there’s your value; there’s our future.

Now explain it to a bank.