dna 2008: michael rosenblum kicks things off

  Michael Rosenblum 
  Originally uploaded by robinhamman

It took a whole 3 or 4 minutes for Michael Rosenblum, the first keynote speaker at DNA2008, to get to that now quite tired cliche

"if you don't wrap your head around the change your gonna die..."

And the way most newspaper and media companies have adapted to that change?

"I'll have these three fuck ups in the corner to do the internet and it will be fine"

Rosenblum says three things are converging to make an almost perfect storm: video cameras that "cost 800 bucks and any idiot can use", low cost laptops and the internet. He describes that storm:

"In the world of meteorology they talk about storms. There's the 50 year storm and the 100 year storm.... in the world of journalism and technology, there's the 500 year storm.... a giant tidal wave... Guttenberg thought the printing press was about making cheaper bibles... but the invention of the printing press... brought about a whole new world of a free press. We don't live in a world of print anymore, we live in a world of video and online... this technological storm is going to wash away most of what we understand today and replace it with something different. Whether you participate in it is entirely in your hands."

Rosenblum's talk was interesting, well delivered and entertaining but I can't help but think that he's maybe spent too much time whipping up his perfect storm and not enough actually out there in the real world. There's a vast gulf between the media landscape he describes, where media companies put little effort into "the fuck ups" in the corner who run online, and the massive investment and talent being thrown at new media by the BBC (my employer) and many others.

Comments

[albert]

"We don't live in a world of print anymore, we live in a world of video and online... this technological storm is going to wash away most of what we understand today and replace it with something different."

I think he's focusing in on the wrong thing. The transition isn't "print"-->"holy crap we can make pictures move!" The main impact of the internet on journalism isn't going to be video and audio, if that were the case, TV and radio would already have killed the newspaper.

The huge difference the internet is going to make is in speed, access, and choice.

[Rosenblum]

Hi Robin
Thanks for the write up, but actually I have a fair amount of experience 'out there in the real world'. I spent 5 years working with The BBC to introduce the VJ concept there, and later to build local tv with N&R. Later I built Current.tv with Al Gore. I also own a hyperlocal TV station in DC built on the model.
Come find me tomorrow if you like
-Rosenblum

[Robin Hamman]

Hi Michael, thanks for popping over to comment. I realise that you want to affect change within the organisations you work with and have certainly been very successful in doing that. But I really don't see a lackadaisical approach to new media at the BBC or elsewhere. Far from it. Yes, we and others probably aren't doing as much as we could with video - and that's clearly your thing - but we are taking lots of steps to integrate new ways of working, social media tools, and audience engagement into what we do. It's not really in my experience that we're in a "change or die" situation. We've changed already and some of us are really starting to focus on growing new audiences in new and innovative ways. There's a lot more to that than just video.

I really, by the way, enjoyed your presentation even if I do disagree!