Everybody or Somebody? Assessing the impact of social media on newsroom organisational structures

With social media’s increasingly important role in fast-paced news, there is a need to identify the occupational and professional implications of social media specifically in terms of jobs and roles in newsrooms. This paper serves as a preliminary enquiry into what social media jobs have been created in newsrooms under which job ti-tles. It explores trends associated with this and the tasks being carried out in those roles to assess the extent to which social media is ring-fenced as a responsibility. From this it is possible to query the wider impact of social me-dia on organisational structure in newsrooms. Two main newsroom models are identified: firstly, newsrooms that place an emphasis on everyone being responsible for so-cial media and secondly, newsrooms where social media is a specified role. The study further serves to guide social media skills for inclusion in journalism trainin

Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site

Collaborative Revenue Capture for Exiled Media

One area which has much potential for wider impact in the digital economy is the as-yet underresearched field of collaborative revenue capture in journalism. This term is proposed to describe methods to capture revenues on behalf of multiple stakeholders (potentially in competition with one another), and divide profits between them. There is evidence of this as an emerging revenue platform in media: Piano Media, a cross-publication model,where pooled premium content from different media outlets is set behind a paywall, initially launched in Slovenia and Slovakia. Or Blendle offering newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands on one website, reconfiguring a revenue model for journalism by making it incredibly easy to pay for separate articles. Another is Diversity, an online advertising network that pools many media sites together into one global advertising network of standard advertising formats andsizes, thus creating a potential global audience reach for advertisers. See for example Contributoria, a member-supported, crowdfunding, collaborative writing platform or the Banyan Project, a news cooperative owned by the community it covers for emerging examples of collaboration around revenues. By way of a test case study, this workshop explored the extent to which collaborative revenue capture can help to achieve a meaningful level of financial independence for media under threat. The long-term success of independent media in exile or restrictive environments, where the free flow of information is restricted and information producers are at risk, depends on financial sustainability, yet there is little scholarly research around revenue model development. These media function, for the most part, by grants from donor organisations which now run into millions of pounds justified by the fact that access to the diverse and credible journalism in countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Syria and Sri Lanka offers the opportunity to deliver much greater social and economic cohesion and political transparency. For media seeking to support the free flow of information in fragile environments, the issue of financial sustainability is complex. Both media in exile (out-of-country news outlets feeding independent information back in) and news outlets in restrictive news environments (in country providing counter information) exist in flawed market situations and often rely on grant funding. Researchers have stopped short of exploring the revenue streams of these media. Empirical data is scarce and a corresponding understanding of the funding structure of these media is lacking. One study of relevance - and from which this workshop draws its roots - fills that gap by mapping three main revenue categories of media in exile or in restrictive news environments: grant funding, earned income and donations. The major factors influencing revenue streams compared to online media startups in open markets are discussed. The author finds there is no one-size-fits-all solution and identifies the need for collaborative approaches to promote economic resilience for media under threat (Cook 2015). As such, exiled media as a vehicle for studying the potential for collaborative revenue capture could be an important indicator to the broader digital industries, which are also grappling with the possibilities for collaborative approaches. This represents an entirely new academic field approach. While the set of circumstances exiled media present are relatively unique, the approach to circumvent them - afforded by digital technologies - is highly transferable. The potential to place a stake in the greater understanding of such collaborative revenue methods showcases the UK as a leader in revenue model experimentation, an area watched with much interest globally

Open Media Innovation

Far from being highly creative and innovative, most of us are glorified sheep. We follow one another and, in most aspects of our lives, use things other people have created. As Leonard Read articulated in his 1958 essay I Pencil, no one knows how to make a pencil: you would need to know about mining, refining, shaping graphite, sourcing wood, delivering materials, logistics, health and safety, and metal engineering. The list goes on. Yet we seem to be in the most innovative and creative periods of our lives. Everyday comes new apps, new inventions and new connections. So how can this be so? This session was created as a direct response to our individual shortfalls. For it is not alone that we can create and innovate, but rather when talents are pooled. Can we understand media innovation processes and unpick them if we work together? Can we open our minds and share our skills in a way to make innovation possible? And can all this be done in a collaborative rapid fire environment across 48 hours? The Medialab Session and Media Innovation Studio brought coders, business minds, entrepreneurs, students, journalism and media professionals from across Europe and America together for 48 hours. Using innovative brain storming and facilitation methods, and a series of workshops, we set out to build five media startups across one weekend. The teams pitched to a panel of expert Dragons to find a winning startup. The process was outputted live through multimedia and social media in order to make the ecosystem collaborative and open. The event built on Medialab Sessions to date, allowing for findings that can feed into larger discussions around media business models online, and open media innovation processes, as a way to facilitate SME growth across a range of sectors. The UK Medialab Session built on three previous events. This groundwork allowed for the development of an innovation ecosystem, which could be accelerated by the dynamic business culture of the UK. The previous Playgrounds were in Nantes (30 participants, 4 teams, 2 new media launched see ), Paris (40 participants, 7 teams, 3 media launched see ) and Brussels (20 participants, 5 teams, 4 media launched). What we found went deeper than the creation of a startup. The process shed new light on the process of media innovation, probing what open innovation means and what needs to happen to benefit the UK digital economy

Sustaining Journalistic Entrepreneurship

Structural change in the media ecology has opened up a range of opportunities for startups, as this report has detailed. Media entrepreneurs have flexed their muscles creating all manner of new sites, products and services in the journalism ecology. Many have launched blogs or niche interest sites, forums or digital communities; others trade on civic, investigative or citizen journalism; others on technology and production. This chapter recognizes the valid addition of these sites to the potential career path of a journalist and the increasing likelihood for journalists to work within, create or alongside such journalistic entities. Where once innovation and change happened slowly, current media technologies are developing continually and the rate of product development has increased exponentially. As part of the interview process to create the SuBMoJour database, researchers had the opportunity to discuss with media managers about the range of skills required to sustain journalistic entrepreneurship. Not all interviewees participated in these discussions. However, the interviews were free enough to allow for subjective information to be solicited where possible as to the journey experienced towards sustainability. Of the responses collated, there were several points of advice from journalism entrepreneurs worthy of note. These are detailed below in the intention of helping those planning their own startup by giving some lived experience of more established entrepreneurs. These are not intended as a definitive list but go some way to identify the scope and reach of possible skills development and research in the future

HYPERLOCAL REVENUES IN THE UK AND EUROPE: Mapping the road to sustainability and resilience

During the past few years, Nesta and other strategic organisations have published research and delivered a range of resources to directly support hyperlocal media publishers to innovate their service. While there are a growing number of examples of innovative and dynamic practice, and an increasing relevance of hyperlocal media due to the shrinking footprint of traditional local print and broadcast media, our research highlights key challenges concerning sustainability (financial as well as human resource), growth and ‘findability’. As the sector continues to grow and becomes more diverse - in regards to the types of businesses and services that are producing content, the type of content being produced, the means through which content is being distributed and the ways in which local audiences are accessing and engaging with content - a more robust examination of how publishers are monetising their services is necessary. Therefore, this study undertakes an analysis of current and emerging revenue streams and the digital technologies facilitating these – the findings of which will help publishers implement positive changes to their own service. This research is aimed at online-first (but not necessarily online-exclusive) hyperlocal practitioners in the UK and in Europe, for them to use the findings and guidance to improve their ability to provide news and information to their local communities for the long term. It also provides evidence and recommendations to wider industry and policymakers in Europe in order for them to better support hyperlocal media, in regards to aspects such as the Digital Single Market, tax regulation especially in regards to organisational structure, and regulation of other areas of the digital and media sectors

Assessing conditions for inter-firm collaboration as a revenue strategy for politically pressured news media

The struggle to find resilient journalism revenue models is nowhere starker than for exiled or politically pressured news media operating in fragile markets. One route forward is to explore inter-firm collaborations as a modus operandi to achieve more financial resilience through a collaborative approach amongst themselves. This article presents findings from a multi-stakeholder atelier that assessed operational revenue conditions for such media. It presents a co-created definition of collaborative revenue capture, then addresses the conditions and forms for collaborative structures. It conceptualises opportunities in four areas: technology, revenue-based systems, coordinating actions and journalism production. The article adds new knowledge by assessing collaborations as a revenue strategy within the under-researched media development area through a participatory mode of inquiry

Understanding Revenue Models in The Business Sustainability of Web-Indigenous Journalism: A Pragmatist Approach

This synoptic commentary explores the challenge of economic sustainability for web-indigenous journalism in the long tail. The work’s most general claim is that drawing attention to workable revenues is illuminating because without money, news media can’t make journalism. My work offers a unique panorama, spanning a pivotal decade of emergent economic practice, of sites in multiple environments at the edge of media systems, often operating in commercially weak niches: start-ups globally, hyperlocals in Europe, and those in politically pressured environments or in exile. Drawing from this internationally rich set of empirical data, the contribution to new knowledge is to define, detail and categorise diversified revenues. Such a springboard allows investigation into the evolving nexus of economic practice and advances the understanding of economic sustainability. A set longterm revenue model is fictitious, and many are still fragile. A small degree of revenue diversification is effective, but alone does not result in sustainability. Advertising dominates and deviation to other income is done through experimentation. Unlike corporate legacy and mainstream media, my work details how web indigenes carve out sustainability through a process of niche adaptation, resulting in heterogeneous revenue models. The synoptic commentary defends the pragmatist approach as a compelling lens through which to explore practice-led research, adding methodological renewal through multiple ways of coming to know. I have contributed by knitting together different practices, frameworks and theories at multiple levels of scale and inquiry, to uncover new knowledge in the media management landscape. These findings provide fresh insights to scholars and practitioners seeking a route-map for sustainable journalism in the long tail

DEMO: UAVs in crowd tagged mountain rescue

This project explores the potential for users to interact with live events in a new and dynamic way. It draws on fixed wing unmanned aircraft and associated sensor systems to provide realtime video and image data. It uses a web based software package as a crowd sourced imagery analysis tool allowing user involvement in the tagging and sorting of images. This technology allows a simulation of how the power of crowds[1] could be combined with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to monitor video footage and identify areas of particular interest by interacting with live video. A test flight in collaboration with Patterdale Mountain Rescue is used. The system fosters active citizenship by connecting communities to real life, live events in open-source creative communities. It explores the barriers and potential for an entirely new capacity for users to choose the perspective and proximity of their view by interacting with images from a UAV through ambient media. Copyright © 2013 ACM

Viable, Sustainable or Resilient?

Abstract Hyperlocal media are increasingly prominent in local media ecologies. However, economic pressures are their biggest challenge and are therefore our main thematic. The study is based on empirical data from 35 hyperlocals in Sweden, the UK, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. We present a conceptual framework of viable, sustainable and resilient models and find that hyperlocals are diversifying their revenues. Drawing on business ecosystems as a theoretical approach, we find these hyperlocals are surviving by forging symbiotic relationships with media, businesses, advertisers and communities in their environment. With its focus on imbalanced and evolving relations, the approach offers a broad framework to explain how hyperlocal business models are developing through a dynamic system of proximal interdependencies. The results contribute to new knowledge by explaining the revenue diversification of hyperlocals in the digital ecosystemic space