My presentation for Digital Directions 11 in Sydney Australia. I talked about how news organisations could find new opportunities in a world of over abundant content and scarce attention.

1. Rebooting journalism
Finding new opportunities in a world of over abundant
content and scarce attention

2. Are you suffering from IOS?
Source: Xerox and YouTube

3. Eric Schmidt of Google
“Between the birth of the
world and 2003, there were five
exabytes of information created.
We [now] create five exabytes
every two days. See why it’s so
painful to operate in information
markets?”
from interview at Atmosphere 2010 conference Photo by Charles Haynes, Some Rights Reserved

4. How much is exabyte?
1 exabyte= 100,000
10 terabytes=
Photo by msmariamad, Some Rights Reserved
An exabyte is 1 million terabytes
The entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress
is 10 terabytes
An exabyte is 100,000 Libraries of Congress

5. Media: From scarcity to abundance
Eric Schmidt at the Guardian Activate 2010 conference

6. Source: Twitter by the Numbers, Raffi Krikorian
Record 3283 tweets per second set during Japan v Denmark
World Cup Match

7. Source: Image Week 17: 2011, LES GO! by ishawalia,
statistics USAToday
750m photos uploaded to Facebook on New Year’s 2011.

8. A decade ago, The Wall Street Journal
wrote 22,000 articles.
In 2010, it created 21,000 articles in
the first six months.
Source: The Hamster
Wheel, Columbia
Journalism Review
Photo: Rupert Murdoch is on my
driveway by Kevin Dooley
Let’s look at what we in the media are doing:
A decade ago, The Wall Street Journal wrote 22,000 articles. In 2010, it has created 21,000
articles in the first six months.

9. Abundance breaks
more things than
scarcity does
Photo: Clay making a point by Joi Ito
Source: Shirky at NFAIS: How Abundance Breaks
Everything by Ann Michael
Society knows how to react to scarcity.” We know how to ration, save, and preserve when we
need to do so. It’s much harder to set priorities and find our path when information
abounds. We may drown. We may get side-tracked. We may shut down. But, in any case,
abundance confuses and distracts us more than scarcity does.

10. Three challenges facing journalism
We’re losing the battle for attention
More content is leading to lower revenues
We’re overwhelming audiences
into inaction

11. Monthly Minutes on site
Average Local US Newspaper New York Times Facebook
Source: The Newsonomics of time-on-site, Jan 2010 by Ken Doctor
The average news reader spends little time on newspaper-owned sites, from a 20 minutes a
month or so on the New York Times site to eight to 12 minutes on most local newspaper
sites. That’s minutes per month. Those numbers, as tracked by Nielsen and reported monthly
by Editor and Publisher, are steady at best, showing, in fact, some recent decline. They are,
literally, stuck in time.
Then, take the number of minutes Internet users spend on social sites. Nielsen’s January tally
showed seven hours of usage a month on Facebook alone, in the U.S., blowing away all
competition.

12. (Information Overload) n
In the US, while
news staffs have
decreased by 25%,
75% of editors say
their papers produce
the same or more
content.
Source: The Hamster Wheel,
Columbia Journalism Review
Photo: Unemployment by Dly86

13. Demand Media, 7000 freelancers,
4500 pieces of content a day
Source: The Hamster Wheel, Columbia Journalism Review
Photo: Coast Guard Storm Exercises by Mike Baird, bairdphotos.com
Demand Media, 7000 freelancers, 4500 pieces of
content a day

14. Source on online revenue: Paid Content Photo: Newstand by Laura Bittner
During recession, online ad rates plummeted due to
oversupply of content Source: PaidContent
Huffington Post has very low returns compared to traditional media rivals. Average revenue
per user is just a little more than a dollar.
To put that in context, the New York Times digital revenue alone is $150m, according to an
estimate by analyst Henry Blodgett.

15. Source: Exhaustion by Jessica M. Cross
The Associated Press commissioned an ethnographic study of young news consumers, 18-34
but with an emphasis on 18-24.
One of the key findings: The subjects were overloaded with facts and updates and were
having trouble moving more deeply into the background and resolution of news stories.
Associated Press study

16. Source: Seedcamp winners riding
wave of relevant content by Jos White
Photo: Where to begin by Bev Sykes
The Internet over the last few years has been about getting as much content to as many people as possible – bringing an incredible range of
content to our screens like never before. The problem is that we are now surrounded by too much content that takes too much time to find,
qualify and consume.
Seedcamp winners riding wave of relevant content by Jos White
Google and the other search engines do a decent job in a wide and shallow sort of way, but there is a growing need for technologies/
services that are able to work on a narrower and deeper level to make better sense of the content out there. There is lots of data available (if
we decide to give it) based on who we are, where we are, what we like and what we are looking for, and, if used intelligently it can enable
good decisions to be made in terms of providing us with more relevant content.
Out of the 12 winners at Seedcamp, seven are involved in optimising content in some way and making it more personalised to the user.

18. From mass to relevance
The evolution from numbers to relevance by Mahendra Palsule

19. Source: Rebuild by Jewish Women's Archive
Bottom Line: Print media, particularly newspapers, need to rebuild the revenue model that
supports journalism and content creation

20. Relationship and relevance
Photo: Intensely
reading the newspaper
in Addis Ababa
by Terje Skjerdal
The future belongs to those who build a great relationship with their audience with best of
breed content and real engagement and those who are able to deliver the smartest, most
relevant content to audiences.

21. The social web as filter

22. Your social network as a filter

23. Social re-bundling of content
Source: Building 43, Exclusive first look: A new kind of social media news reader: FlipBoard

24. Social media has to be social
Source: Cup of Robots - on White by Hobvias Sudoneighm
You cannot outsource your social media strategy to robots.

25. Social media journalism
4000 miles
2060 photos
1600 Twitter upates
50 blog posts
4 blogger meetups
2 podcasts

26. Networked journalism

28. Praise for Andy

29. #Pledge4Andy

30. Smarter, more relevant content

31. Who runs Hong Kong
When it does all come
together, it will be a way to
extract more value out of
journalists’ work on a day-to-
day basis
-Reg Chua
Editor-in-Chief, South China Morning Post
Who Runs Hong Kong is officially live – an interactive visualization of 4,000 key people and
2,000 companies and organizations in Hong Kong and how they’re connected.
...If we have a database of relationships of key people and companies, add some generally-
known-but-not-easily-accessed (or not-so-generally-known) information, such as family
ties or schools attended, and then have journalists update the database whenever they file
stories on the people and companies, then after a while you have a monster database that’s
increasing in value everyday – and can’t easily be replicated.

32. Real-time and real-space
Source: Google
And LOCATION

33. Location and the new loyalty
Source: Location-based Marketing on Foursquare by Global X

34. Journalism opportunities

35. News is happening near you
Sources: Image by Foursquare, story from Econsultancy
News organisations are now able to deliver news to users based on where they are at. This
allows the delivery of highly relevant news and information.

36. What’s stopping you?
How many
psychiatrists does it
take to change a
light bulb?
Photo: an idea (the light bulb) by Alosh Bennet

37. One...but the light bulb has to want to change
Photo massive change by 416style

38. Kevin Anderson
Twitter: kevglobal
kevin@charman-anderson.com
http://charman-anderson.com