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The death of the music store

If you look carefully, you can already see the beginning of the end of the music store as we know them in South Africa, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK in the first of a series on the future of music.

If you look carefully, you can see the death of the music store inside any music store. CDs and actual music packages are quietly retreating from shelves and displays across the store. Music accessories, gadgets and assorted electronic peripherals are creeping into the abandoned positions.

Five to ten years from now, the takeover will be complete, and you won’t go into a music store to buy music. You will buy the devices that enhance your enjoyment of music, and you will find it quaint that these were once called record shops.

“We are already seeing an even split between consumer electronics, music, movies and gaming,” confirms Darren Levy, CEO of music chain Look & Listen, which was once almost entirely dedicated to music.

But it’s not only in stores where we can see the future arrive. The future of music has also arrived in the global hi-tech industry, where technology giants like Google, Amazon and Apple fight each other in court and online.

On 30 March, Amazon became the first of the majors to offer music in the “cloud”. This meant any digital music you had bought legitimately could be uploaded onto Amazon’s systems, and downloaded as and when you wanted it, and how you wanted it.

The very title of the Amazon executive who made the announcement is a signal: Bill Carr is “vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon”. Before long, every major technology company will have an equivalent executive.

“The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music,” Carr said in his announcement. “Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices.”

That’s not rocket science, but the music industry has tended to stick its head in the digital sands and hoped the future would go away. Indeed, it will go away, to be replaced by even more challenging futures, as music keeps evolving.

Less than six weeks after Amazon’s opening shot, on May 10, Google Music Beta was unveiled. Like Amazon, it offers the “locker” model, where you can store music you already own.

Apple was somewhat conspicuous by its absence from this rivalry. It had almost single-handedly changed the music industry with the launch of iTunes a decade ago, but some argued that it wanted customers’ music to remain “stuck” in iTunes and on their hard drives.

The industry didn’t have to hold its breath for long. On 6 June, Steve Jobs took to the stage to demonstrate iCloud, which allows online storage and synchronisation of users’ data on all Apple devices. The first service to be integrated with the iCloud: iTunes.

In combination, it is clear that these services herald the beginning of mass migration of digital music from hard drives, flash drives and quaint old silver discs called CDs. The destination is the Cloud, locker, vault or whatever you want to call storage that is housed on a computer network in another part of the world.

The music industry barely has a role to play in this mass migration: it is a mere bystander in the reinvention of its business. While it wrings its collective hands at the unfairness of digital tracks selling for less than R10 instead of the R140 people used to pay for entire albums on CD, the market moves on.

And this is only the first of the big changes coming. Coming editions of this column will look at the “co-revolutions” that go hand-in-hand with the movement into clouds, to create the perfect storm in music. The rise of Internet radio, online music libraries and build-it-yourself playlists means that the worst pain is still to come for traditional record companies and stores.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up the World Wide Worx market research organisation and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. He will present his research on the future of music at the Moshito music conference in Johannesburg on 31 August. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget magazine.

S’HOT: Putting faces to (endangered wildlife) figures

The Client:The Endangered Wildlife Trust
The Agency: TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris
The Brief: Promote the Endangered Wildlife Trust and its causes.
Creative Solution: Behind every number that makes up a statistic there is a living animal. TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris decided to give meaning to otherwise meaningless statistics by ‘putting faces to the figures’. Posters ran at EWT offices, various conservation programmes, seminars, lectures and presentations. It had a limited run in selected print media. It has since become part of the Lindt Environmental Exhibition.

Creative Team: Damon Stapleton (ECD), Adam Weber (CD), Lizali Blom (Art Director), Jared Osmond, Lizali Blom (Copywriters), Miguel Nunes (Creative Group Head)

From my Create Campaigns column in the July 2011 issue of AdVantage magazine

Ad workers on go slow

The Creative Recruitment And Producer’s (CRAP) union – which represents copywriters, graphic designers and recruitment agents across the country – has announced that its members are set to embark on a nation-wide strike in a bid to improve wages and working conditions.

‘We’re asking for a 25% salary increase, aside from specific issues that need to be addressed with respect to working conditions,’ says Errol Conradie, CRAP spokesperson.

The employers association is offering 5%, plus an across-the-board reduction in bar opening times.

‘We were hoping the employers would come to the table in better faith than that,’ said Conradie in repsonse to the latest offer. ‘While we appreciate the offer to open to agency bars at 8am instead of 9am, this single benefit in no way compensates for the tiny increase. It doesn’t come close to addressing other key issues, like the frequency of brochure assignments, either.’

A reduction in the number of brochures being produced across the industry is one of CRAP’s key ‘advertising working condition’ negotiation points. The union maintains brochures are personally demeaning for both copywriters and designers, and that to be forced to produce too many double sided A4’s constitutes a violation of a creative worker’s basic human rights.

‘Look, we all know how bad it can get,’ says Conradie. ‘The double sided A4 has broken many a worker over the years and we’re determined to address this issue. We believe employers and clients should be equally steadfast in seeking to wipe this scourge out of our working lives completely.’

Melanie Hardbottom, spokesperson for the Adverising Employers Association, was curt in her reaction to CRAP’s position.

‘They should be grateful that they get work at all, to say nothing of the free alcohol and cut price cocaine,’ she commented in a recently released statement.

‘The recession isn’t over yet and agency bosses have taken heavy hits. Stories abound about owners having sell off one or even two of their houses on the coast just to keep business going. And as far as brochures are concerned, it’s common knowledge that most agencies would go under if they didn’t have the print management mark-up to survive off, so workers need to be careful what they ask for.’

CRAP announced that its strike action would intensify dramatically over the following week, with workers protesting via a go slow that will see them wearing headphones and listening to bad dance music in the office, surfing the internet randomly, drinking and getting high from before lunch and playing foosball obsessively.

‘Employers will see exactly how tough it can get,’ added Conradie confrontationally ‘We’re in this for the long haul, and if that means sitting around doing absoluty bugger-all all day, then that’s what we’ll do.’

— Andrew Miller has been a media and corporate ghost writer for the last 13 years. He used to write marketing satire under the John Doe pseudonym for Brand Magazine and Media Toolbox. When not releasing communications bile, Andrew runs Newtown’s Unity Design, a socially orientated arts and media company. Catch up with Unity on Facebook and Twitter.

S’HOT: Loving Porky’s CrateFan

The Client: Coca-Cola
The Agency: Animal Farm
The Brief: Show that recycling doesn’t need to have an end point.
Creative Solution: Cratefan was created to showcase Coca-Cola’s recycling initiative, Live For a Difference, during the FIFA World Cup. Cratefan is a complex inner skeleton of scaffolding which is then clad with an outer layer of red Coke crates. Building on the recycling theme the installation is being continuously reimagined to celebrate Christmas, Easter and Cokes’ 125th Birthday.
Creative Team: Porky Hefer

From my Create Campaigns column in the July 2011 issue of AdVantage magazine

And your next phone is … (hint: don’t assume its an iPhone)

With the market changing so fast, what smartphone should you get next? It’s an increasingly complex question, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK as he lays out the landscape for your future options.

The single most common question put to anyone vaguely involved in the world of gadgetry is what phone they recommend. But it is impossible to tell someone else what phone they should use based on what you prefer. What works for one user does not necessarily work for another.

Just lately, however, the question has become even more complicated.

It goes: “What operating system should I choose when I buy my next phone?” Or: “Should I get a BlackBerry on my next upgrade because I love my current one but I hear they’re going down in the USA?”

This usually develops into a debate about which operating system (OS) will be dominant a year or two from now, and whether existing brands will still be around by then.

While some trends are obvious, others are impossible to predict – in particular which brands will dominate two years from now. However, based on current research and trends, there are a few statements and assumptions one can make, while noting that anything can change the market.

This is the context within which brand choice is likely to be made:

* The Mobility 2011 study, released in February 2011, showed that, based on consumer intentions, BlackBerry would be the fastest growing cellphone brand in South Africa in 2011. The study indicated it had a potential of reaching 24% market share among cellphone users aged 16+ living in cities and towns. During the first half of 2011, BlackBerry lived up to these expectations, taking a stranglehold of the smartphone market. By June, it was reported to make up as much as 70% of smartphone sales.

While its market share has slumped amid explosive growth of smartphones in Western markets, unit sales themselves remain strong, and it is maintaining a dazzling growth rate in the developing world. Nevertheless, poor strategic decisions by BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion means that the brand may well lose this momentum by 2012. But momentum is one thing; market share is another story altogether. For at least the next year, it will remain the dominant smartphone brand in South Africa, and will still have significant market share into 2013. Developers are avoiding BlackBerry at their peril.

* Globally, phones using Google’s mobile OS, Android, show both strongest brand momentum and market leadership. This trend is likely to have an impact on all markets, giving Android a powerful market position in South Africa in the coming two years. Led by Samsung, HTC and Motorola, as well as lesser-known brands – in South Africa. That is – like ZTE and Huawei, it will pose a multi-pronged challenge.

Google’s announcement last week that it was buying Motorola’s mobile business means that even that brand, written off in recent years as a contendor, may emerge as a powerful “new” player in the Android market. Its release last week in South Africa of the Xoom tablet and Atrix smartphone illustrated quite powerfully that it was still a force for innovation, 83 years later.

* Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS has minimal market presence in South Africa – and is not even fully functional on local networks. However, it is appearing on cutting edge phones from Samsung and HTC. When its next version, codenamed Mango, is rolled out, it will become many people’s phone of choice.

More important, it has a sleeping giant waiting in the wings. While Nokia appears to have surrendered the smartphone market, it still has around 50% overall market share in South Africa. As Nokia migrates to the Windows platform, and the mass market migrates to smartphones, brand loyalty is likely to kick in to give it substantial market share.

* Apple’s iPhone remains a small player in terms of market share in South Africa, largely because Apple’s business model limits the way it can be marketed and sold here. In effect, Apple has handed the Third World to Google and BlackBerry, and given Microsoft a foot in the door.

As the cost of iPhones come down, and availability bottlenecks are addressed, it will become an increasingly important player here – but not a dominant one.

By 2013 we are likely to see a market characterised by strong competition between all four major platforms – and even more difficulty for consumers looking for an easy choice.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up the World Wide Worx market research organisation and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. You can follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

S’HOT: Birds+Bees

A collaboration between DraftFCB, Michael Meyersfeld and Luma resulted in this campaign for Vodacom’s adult content management system.

Executive Creative Director: Gareth Paul
Art Director: Bradley Stapleton
Copywriter: Melusi Mhlungu
Photographer: Michael Meyersfeld
3D Artist: Tim Morar

King James makes good

King James, one of the country’s most respected ad agencies, is full of good news. The Cape-Town-based agency, named after its founders Alistair King and James Barty, has been winning business and accolades and has just moved into the stately building it bought, the historic Roodebloem Manor, in Woodstock, Cape Town.

Four years ago, things were less rosy. The Great Recession, brought on by the global financial crisis, arrived, and though it had thought it had all but secured the premises, credit suddenly dried up and Roodebloem Manor fell out of KingJames’s grasp (or that of anybody else for that matter).

But, over the past year, the business has re-established itself on firmer ground – having won the accounts of food group McCain, British Airways (King James already holds the account for sister airline kulula.com) and short-term insurer Santam (strategic lead and above-the-line).

Once again, the team at King James called up the properties’ owners, negotiated a deal and moved in over Christmas last year. Moving into the new building, from an agency culture point of view, “has been epic, and crucial in building onto the momentum we’ve managed to create this past year,” says Alistair King, group creative director, King James Group.

More good news followed when, at the start of this year, King James won the whole of the Parmalat account and followed that with bagging the Pan-African Johnnie Walker business of the global “Keep Walking” campaign. More recently, it won the consolidated Nashua account after a four-way agency pitch, as well as the Galaxy business.

The agency was also named AdReview Agency of the Year in 2011 by Tony Koenderman.

King believes years of hard work have finally added up to push the agency into its best position ever. It has has been perfectly positioned to take advantage of shifts in the advertising industry, he says, with the new building accelerating the blurring of lines between the different divisions that make up King James that started with the launch of its social media arm +one.

These other divisions include King James RSVP (the design and promotions arm of the business), Mnemonic (digital), Atmosphere (PR), Hammer (activations), Dare Media (media strategy) and Proof (proofing studio), as well as pop culture media group One Small Seed.

King says the large agency groups had initially been slow to respond to the changing business environment wrought by the advent of digital and mobile because often clients themselves were slow to change. Agencies needed buy-in from the people paying their bills before undertaking radical shifts in their structures and thinking.

But, over the past several years, a new language has emerged from the corporate world that shifts advertising away from silos to media-agnostic ideas. As clients become more adventurous, agencies are breaking out of their initial digital malaise.

King says that King James doesn’t favour one medium above another – its work for Kulula.com shows an cross-media approach that maximises media value for its client – and takes a swipe at smaller specialists by saying they are the only ones still favouring specific media (ie digital).

Ad agencies, says King, traditionally branch outwards to encompass all the modern media platforms, while specialists tend to stick to narrow fields and single media channels. “They’ve cornered themselves by being experts in one field,” says King.

At the moment, King James is consolidating its account wins and will only consider pitching for new business in exceptional circumstances. Pitches tend to soak up energy and distract agencies from their clients, says King, and King James will carefully consider what business it wants before throwing its hat in the ring.

King says the agency runs a tight ship, with only three senior creative teams creating working on all its accounts. Each member of the team is a creative director in their own right. A fourth team is in the works.

At King James, juniors are being plugged in around the senior teams as studio hands building up experience before they graduate to making ads themselves.

This is as it used to be, says King, but the advertising schools has changed that, telling students they will be ready to make ads as soon as they graduate, yet often new entrants into the ad industry are unable to cope with the real world pressures of demanding clients, budgets etc. This put pressure on the agency system, says King.

The new mentorship system in place at King James “puts aside the pressure to make ads while they are still learning their craft” says King. That said – everybody’s ideas are welcome – “nothing in this agency can stop a great idea.”

The Johannesburg agency remains in place with several important clients, including BA, Nashua and McCain. But its studio has been closed and all strategy and creative moved to Cape Town after King decided splitting his time between the different offices didn’t benefit the group or their clients. A small two-person studio is now back on the cards to produce good retail work on quick turnaround times for Johannesburg-based clients.

The growth momentum of the agency has largely put its nascent publishing arm, a partnership with Shaun Johnson, on the back-burner, though King says he is keen to resurrect that business as soon as possible. King James also owns One Small Seed, the pop culture magazine and community, with the digital side seeing growth but the print business under pressure along with the rest of its peers.

Roodebloem Manor, meanwhile, is shifting gear again. Formerly a farm homestead and later hotel (the old Lord Milner), and serving more recently as the offices for a chartered accounting firm, it is once again due for refurbishment as the home of King James.

Its lawns might no longer stretch down do the beach, long since filled in by the city’s expansion, as it once had, but its experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Quite appropriate, really – given its new owners.

Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments

Hair affair

South African Township Barbershops & Salons

A new book explores the township barbershop as cultural and social hub

South African Township Barbershops and Salons
By Simon Weller
Published by Mark Batty Publisher
128 pages
$27.95

Housed in shacks and shipping containers, with hair clippers wired to car batteries, township barbershops and ‘street salons’ are incredibly popular.

With names like King Tiger’s Hair Clinique, Ghetto Hair Salon, Hollywood Barbershop and Homeboys Haircut, shops attract customers with hand-painted signs whose distinctive vernacular style has as much to do with art as marketing.

In the new book South African Township Barbershops and Salons, Simon Weller documents the thriving, little-known art of barbershop signage and explains this integral part of the culture of South Africa. Weller’s book pairs interviews with shop owners, customers and sign artists with vivid photographs of barbershop exteriors and interiors, creating a portrait of the strong community and continuing political and social struggle inherent in township life.

Lucky, a barber, explains the importance of barbershops: “It is a place where you can discuss the game that was played last night while you are waiting. We talk about a mixture of things that happen in our lives – “ politics, girls, cars, soccer and movies.”

Artists, with a range of backgrounds and influences, are frequently asked to paint contemporary characters from American culture, particularly black stars like Tupac and Snoop Dogg, as well as pictures of custom haircuts.

Sign artist and designer Garth Walker, who is interviewed in the book, describes the style of barbershop design and why it should be celebrated: “We like it because it looks good and it makes you feel good and that’s what graphic design is supposed to do. There is no concept, it’s just joyous. That is the bedrock of the African approach to just about everything – “ if you like it, do it.”

Buy it at Loot or Kalahari.net. Reprinted from Enjin magazine.

HP surrenders in PC, phone, tablet war

A series of recent announcements from HP represented the company’s surrender in the war for the most hotly contested segments of the market, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.

An oblique statement that HP’s board has “authorized the evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group” was the camouflage under which the company began its retreat from the most hotly contested segments of the hi-tech economy.

It also announced it would explore “the separation of its PC business into a separate company through a spin-off or other transaction”.

In a separate announcement, it stated: “HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

In short, HP is selling off its PC business, and dumping its expensive investments in tablets and mobile phone technology. It has halted development of the TouchPad tablet and WebOS operating system that powered it, along with the HP Pre, the rebranded Palm Pre phones that came its way via last year’s acquisition of Palm.

The reason for dumping such recent investments? It can’t figure out how to make more money from these segments. Or, as it put it more formally, “The exploration of alternatives for PSG demonstrates our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and sharpening our strategic and financial focus”.

The puzzling aspect of the announcement is the fact that HP, through its Personal Systems Group (PSG), is currently the world’s biggest PC manufacturer. As HP stated yesterday, “PSG is the leading manufacturer of personal computers in the world and had annual revenues of approximately $41 billion in fiscal year 2010. PSG enjoys leading global market positions in consumer and commercial PCs.”

The decision to sell off this massive and market-leading division seems to indicate that HP has bet the future of the PC market on the tablet format, where it has failed dismally to make an impact with the TouchPad. Rather than go back to the drawing board, it seems, they’d rather flee the battlefield while their assets are still intact and can be sold at a premium.

Should tablets become the dominant format, and HP not have a major share of it, revenues at PSG would plummet, and the value of the unit would follow suit. By selling now, HP is in effect pre-empting what it sees as the inevitable end of its market domination.

Or, as HP coded it, “HP is implementing a plan to fundamentally transform the company. An important component of the plan is focusing its investments, resources and management attention to drive higher value solutions to enterprise, small and midsize business and public sector customers. HP believes that the exploration of alternatives for PSG will help the company accomplish its strategic goals and pursue profitable growth and enhanced shareholder value. A post-transaction HP would continue to help its customers manage the information explosion and address their most critical needs through a portfolio that spans printing, software, services, servers, storage and networking.”

To make up for the revenue loss from dumping PSG, HP also yesterday announced the acquisition of UK database and search software company Autonomy Corporation for $10.3 billion. This positions HP as an enterprise-focused company, much as IBM did when it sold off its computer division, which became what we know today as Lenovo. IBM itself, meanwhile, has enjoyed an almost unchecked upward trajectory in revenues, profits and share price. HP would like some of what they’re having.

In his own comments, HP president and CEO Leo Apotheker focused entirely on the investor rather than consumer implications – which he curiously characterises as “secular”:

“The exploration of alternatives for PSG demonstrates our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and sharpening our strategic and financial focus. In March we outlined a strategy for HP, built on cloud, solutions and software to address the changing requirements of our customers, shaped heavily by secular market trends that are redefining how technology is consumed and deployed.

“Since then, we have observed the acceleration of these market trends, which has led us to evaluate additional steps to transform HP to meet emerging opportunities. We believe the acquisition of Autonomy, combined with the exploration of alternatives for PSG, would allow HP to more effectively compete and better execute its focused strategy.”

The HP statement gave an interesting spin on the unstated realisation that HP was about to lose its market leadership:

“The personal computing market is quickly evolving with new form factors and application ecosystems. Given these realities, HP believes it is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders to explore ways for PSG to position itself to address these rapid changes and maintain its technological and market leadership positions.”

HP expects the process of selling PSG to be completed within 12-18 months, but warns: “There can be no assurance that any transaction regarding PSG will be pursued or completed. The company does not intend to disclose developments with respect to the progress of its strategic alternatives review process until such time as the HP board of directors approves or completes a transaction or otherwise determines that further disclosure is appropriate.”

Apotheker added: “As we explore alternatives for PSG, we will be focused on a path that not only enhances value for HP shareholders but also provides greater opportunities for our people, businesses, partners and customers. While this process is underway, we will remain focused on operating our businesses. The strength of PSG is a testament to our world-class team of employees and reflects their commitment to innovation and customers and partners.”

Ultimately, the HP business model began changing the day IBM sold off Lenovo. However, there is little doubt that the iPad and the subsequent tablet war delivered the shot across the bows that sent HP scuttling for cover.

Reprinted from Gadget

Social media use in journalism still evolving, as new award shows

The Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards is among the most prestigious and richest in the country. The awards, now celebrating its 10th year, rewards outstanding reporting and excellence in journalism, with the overall winner walking away with R125 000 in prize money.
The Vodacom awards have various categories by media such as print, radio, television and by niches such as sport, financial/economic reporting, consumer journalism etc.

Of course, the media industry has been fundamentally impacted by the growth of digital media. It has affected the sector economically, cornering classifieds and job ads that used to be the domain of newspapers, siphoning away readers from print media and made media global so that audiences are no longer confined to where the paper was available but to anybody that can access it online.

Less revenue, greater costs cuts, fewer editors, less fact-checking. The results have had a sobering impact on the journalism. It’s also redefining how media practitioners engage with their readership/audience, competitors and sometimes even sources.

Readers have become collaborators in distributing and analysing content; the Letters page editor doesn’t exist online, making newsroom transparency and accessibility important; breaking news happens via social media; and talent doesn’t have to climb the newsroom ladder slowly, but is spotted and grabbed.

So it’s not surprising to find ‘online journalism’ as a category in the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards. What is surprising is that the category description talks about online media as “news in bite-sized chunks” when long-form journalism has met with considerable success online. But that is another debate.

As of this year, the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards has added a category called ‘Social Media in Journalism’ in association with Cerebra, a social media and mobile company.

“This [social media] category recognises the most effective use of social media networks, communities and tools in the creation and/or delivery of journalistic content,” the awards website explains. “This could cover the use of social media in information gathering, research or promotion and distribution of the content of a story.”

How important is it for an award like this to acknowledge the role social media is playing in modern journalism?

One of the award judges, journalist and industry researcher Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee), says that “it is important to acknowledge social media in its own right only insofar as traditional awards do not recognise the role played by social media in supporting or expanding reportage and journalism.

“In its own right, it will ultimately not be seen as a separate category of journalism, but one that pulls all strands of journalism together. My ideal would be to reward entries that illustrate the best integration of all media platforms.”

Prof Anton Harber, from the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University, says while social media is generally a useful research tool and a powerful communication device, it is very seldom the medium for carrying anything but the shortest alert and link to a story.

“As such it has become an essential tool for journalists, but this feels a bit like giving an award for the best use of Google, or the best use of the telephone,” says Harber. “I am concerned that the proliferation of award categories cheapens awards and am surprised they did not just make the use of social media a criteria in all of the other categories for which they are making awards. I fear that in the rush to be trendy, they may be demeaning their awards.”

Harber nails the hammer on the head when he says social media would be better recognised and served if viewed as criteria in all of the other categories for which awards are made. Social media in the media context, after all, is not about the platform or media but about how journalists relate to and engage with their readership.

Could the award lead to greater interest on social media by journalists and media organisations?

Prof Herman Wasserman, head of the Research Unit for Media in the Global South at Rhodes University, believes the award could make journalists aware of the importance of social media within the converged media landscape and encourage them to explore social media and its uses for journalism further.

“An especially good outcome would be if social media would encourage and enable journalists to establish closer contact with their audiences, allowing for greater reciprocity from the audience and help journalists to find more ways of collaborating with audiences (or what Jay Rosen referred to as the People Formerly Known as the Audience) to produce news interactively,” says Wasserman.

As journalists explore the use of social services such as Twitter, the ethics of how the profession’s standards and ethics (and, yes, some might argue lack thereof) translate into this sphere does step to the fore.

Many news organisations still don’t have social media policies in place. On the upside, this does gives journalists leeway to experiment for themselves but the world of 140 characters can be unforgiving.

So what would be optimal – the freedom to experiment or corporate support pushing use of social media within some defined parameters?

Wasserman says the freedom to experiment is important but, at the same time, organisations should also be aware of the challenges posed by social media for journalism – especially ethical challenges.

“Organisations should allow journalists to experiment but also create an environment where journalists are aware of the issues around privacy, accuracy etc that arise in the social media arena, and create opportunities where these challenges can be discussed and engaged with,” he cautions.

Goldstuck agrees there is nothing wrong with the freedom to experiment, “if it is given a context and if it is in the hands of a skilled practitioner”. Goldstuck warns that editors who don’t have the skills or the vision to integrate social media will merely damage such efforts; journalists who don’t have the skill or knowledge to engage in social media will probably embarrass themselves and their media outlets.

“Well-defined parameters, along with visionary editors and skilled and informed journalists, would provide the best combination and integration of skills and content required,” says Goldstuck.

“Having said all that, there are no hard and fast rules for what works best in social media, or how traditional media must integrate social media. Those will evolve with time, and the best practitioners will help to lay down the ground rules through example, rather than by decree.”

Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments