18 Jun 10

Beyond These Walls

By Peter Sanchez, Trainee Planner Buyer

In a matter of weeks, two of Britain’s best known newspapers will impose pay restrictions on their online content. The Times and Sunday Times, part of the News Corp’s stable of successful newspaper titles, will be surrounded by pay-walls. Content, after all, does have a price – only time will tell if it has buyers. But the Empire isn’t stopping with newspaper pay-walls. On Monday 14th June, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, announced to the stock market its intention to buy the remaining shares of BSkyB. (News Corp currently controls 39% of BSkyB).

The announcement triggered many commentators to ask: Will Ofcom allow the deal? Is that a good offer for shareholders? How will the deal be structured – cash or equity? Will Rupert fix my wonky satellite dish? Okay, that last one was just me. But seriously, if the deal goes ahead, will the consolidation of media power across digital TV and print publishing mean more pay-walls and a tighter (biased?) grip on who controls the media landscape? Can we access relevant news and information, without necessarily, the restriction of pay-walls?

Perhaps some of the ways in which we approach this challenge rests with the work of the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge initiative. The American non-profit organisation was established by the Knight brothers, who until 2006 controlled the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.A. Through their News Challenge initiative, the Knight Foundation gives over £3m annually to “develop platforms, tools and services to inform and transform community news, conversations and information distribution and visualization.”

Newspaper moguls giving away some money? Nothing new. However, the funding is encouraging ideas similar to those struggling to break through in our own media landscape. Through the Spot.us project, “independent journalists and residents will propose stories, while Spot Journalism uses the Web to seek “micro-payments” to cover the costs. If enough donors contribute the amount needed, a journalist will be hired to do the reporting.” Similar to the now axed STV Local project. Or EveryBlock, which will “create, test and release open-source software that links databases to allow citizens of a large city to learn (and act on) civic information about their neighbourhood or block.” Think of it as a micro-level version of data.gov.uk. Sticking with something else Sir Tim Berners Lee helped create, there is Transparent Journalism. The project will “design a way for content creators to add information on their sources to their reports, as a form of “source tagging.” For instance, a reporter could note that an article was based on personal observations, interviews with eyewitnesses, or specific original documents.”

Admittedly, some News Challenge projects are technological paroxysms against fundamental socio-cultural changes. Yet, some may have the ability to change the way in which we consume, and crucially, contribute, to the news and information we rely upon. Though some of us will want Murdoch’s pay-wall venture to fail, media survival depends more on what is not restricted, than what is.

And as for empires, walls are always the last line of defence.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/knight-news-challenge-grant-recipients.html
http://www.newschallenge.org/index.html