Updated: both parts (1 and 2) are now available off the dedicated News 2.0 web page as archived audio. (See the right-hand column.) You might notice that Part 2 runs for more than an hour, meaning that this archived version actually contains more information than the live-broadcast hour. Ira Basen told me that when they mixed Part 2, the hour show came out about five minutes too long. They had to delete some sound bites that Ira liked quite a bit. As such, they decided to use the original version for the podcast, which Ira refers to as his “director’s cut” version.
I’m briefly interrupting the wonderful debate on CPRS’s new definition of public relations to let you know that a new, two-part CBC Radio show, produced by Ira Basen (of Spin Cycles fame), begins on Sunday, June 21st: News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media.
Both segments are one hour in length. Part one will air at 11 a.m. in four North American time zones. Part two is slated for Sunday, June 28, 2009, but note that this segment is slated to begin one hour earlier, at 10 a.m..
Canadians can tune in via conventional radio (part of the Sunday Report show) in any of the four time zones. International listeners can use the web-based live stream for CBC Radio One (again, during any of the four time zones for Sunday Report. It is also available to subscribers of satellite at Sirius Radio 137. A show description is now live on the CBC news section of its website.
Similar to Spin Cycles, the two show segments will eventually be available as audio files off of the dedicated web page for News 2.0; however, first the tapes need to be re-mixed, to delete copyrighted music. (Ira Basen chooses his musical accompaniements with great care, and assures me that “The radio version will be better.”) I will update this post with a link as soon as I receive word that the audio files are online.
The first program, on Sunday, June 21, 2009, features:
– Paul Sullivan, formerly of Orato.com
– Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur
– Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody
– Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers
The second program, on Sunday, June 28, 2009, features
– Kirk Lapointe, The Vancouver Sun
– Mathew Ingram, Communities Editor, Globe and Mail
– Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?
– Jay Rosen, Journalism Professor, NYU
– Michael Tippett, NowPublic.com
Chris Anderson, editor in chief, Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail, is featured in both segments.
I understand that this two-part series will be especially helpful for people new to the concepts of social media, particularly as they apply to the way journalism is changing (i.e., it is not aimed at the early adopters audience). Part one, in particular, will have a lot of background and exposition. (And I’ve already given Ira Basen a scolding about his lack of female subject experts. He tells me there are women in the program–such as those interviewed at the mesh09 conference, but admits that all of the featured profiles are men. And mainly American men at that.)
Update:
Ruth Seeley has set up a hashtag on twitter for this show: #news2.0. She has been live-tweeting the first segment.
Links to this post:
– News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media (Politisite, WordPress)
– News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media> (Politisite, Blogspot)
– News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media (Iron Mill News Service)
– CBC lets Ira Basen down. Again. (UPDATED) (FlackLife)
– News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media (NowPublic)
– social I median (PR Measurement News Network)
If you want to listen to the show on the airwaves (or stream it from the website), CBC Radio One’s The Sunday Edition plans to re-broadcast News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media on Sundays, October 18 and 25.
For my part of the world, the segmets air at 11 a.m. EST.
Journalism is Dead; Long Live Journalism. How the web is reinventing journalism (Rem Rieder in conversation with Ira Basen)
If you live in the Greater Toronto Area and are available on the evening of September 15th, act fast to register (no charge) for a chance to hear Ira Basen in person. I’ll be there!
(Registration only went online on Tuesday and spaces are already more than 50 per cent gone. Don’t delay!)
On average the Sunday edition gets about a 16 share of audience numbers. For comparison purposes local radio CBC morning shows will be around a 15 share on average.
(Share = The listening hours attributed to an individual station expressed as a percentage of all radio listening hours during that time block. )
Depending on the market size across the country those numbers aren’t bad. Radio ratings aren’t quite like TV Neilson rating where you do instant polling, and for the CBC that would be pretty cost prohibitive anyway, so you’ll never really know the numbers for Ira Basen’s shows.
As for the signal problem it is more common that you’d imagine. Are you in a location that has Radio One on FM as well as AM ? The AM signal can really be jerked around by buildings and local interference. The FM signal can generally get around that. In Calgary for instance the AM signal become problematic to the point they eventually added an FM version of the signal as well.
In the world of communication and equal access to all and for all you’ve illustrated a point. Not everyone has $2,000 worth of computer equipment or necessarily the bandwith to stream audio or video. Yet in a heartbeat we tell ’em to go there to get it.
BTW I was with CBC as a Producer and Program Manager for a number of years–hence the numbers….
Mike
Updated: both parts 1 and 2 are now available off the dedicated News 2.0 web page as archived audio. (See the right-hand column.) You’ll notice that Part 2 actually runs for more than an hour, meaning that this archived version actually contains more information than the live-broadcast hour.
* * *
Re: your comment, you’re welcome for the link, Brian. As Ira Basen has been kind enough to feed me information over the past year on how this show was progressing, I was increasingly thinking how useful and interesting it would be.
No, I don’t work for the CBC, so I have no idea how many people listened to the live show or will access the archived audio version. But, unlike you, I believe that CBC Radio still has a very strong audience base, both nationally and internationally–particularly through its podcasts. I know that CBC Radio is often running in my home, because I continue to find its programs of the highest journalistic calibre and interest.
Here’s a suggestion: why not contact the CBC’s Audience Relations division and ask for numbers? At that time you can also indicate that you have problems receiving the signal on your conventional radios. I suspect it’s a problem isolated to your geographical area. Certainly my signal is very clear and strong.
Cheers,
Judy
The Star is running house ads promoting the importance of quality journalism.
The Star and The Globe and Mail have both recently run stories about awards they have won.
The Star recently ran a story about why it refuses some awards, when these are presented by organizations the newspaper covers.
Judy, thanks for the link to the show.
After I failed to get two radios to work on the CBC, we managed to turn on the computer, and used a $2000 device to listen to a radio program.
Good show.
Any idea how many people were listening today, and how many more will listen over the next month of so?
BAK
Updated: the web-based audio version of part I is now online (and according to Ira Basen, “and it’s actually not too bad”). Remember that this Sunday’s part II starts one hour earlier….
If you really want to see some pharma marketing in action:
http://twitter.com/racewithinsulin
And indeed I have almost as many years in at the CBC as Ira, but I left in late 2005 to go over to the dark side of PR and communications.
Thanks for the comments, Mike and Bill. In the interest of disclosure, Mike and I got to know one another (limited to online correspondence and interaction so far) because of our professional/personal relationship with Ira Basen; he was our original connection.
In light of the discussion about the nature of the so-called “news” aspect of public relations needing to change, I draw your attention to an article published in yesterday’s Toronto Star:
Drug ‘reports’ found to be faked
by Stuart Laidlaw, Faith and Ethics Reporter
June 22, 2009
Firms misrepresented some research results, slew of cases suggest
From the creation of fake academic journals, to bogus stories submitted to real journals, to falsified results in some of academia’s most respected publications – the pharmaceutical industry has been rocked by allegations that the world’s biggest drug companies put public relations above public safety. [bolding is mine]
As consumer advocate Peter Lurie put it recently: “I’ve seen no shortage of creativity emanating from the marketing departments of drug companies.”
(Of course this article also dovetails nicely with my other, rather active post, about a new definition for public relations.)
Thanks for adding the missing word!
If PR masters the digital universe and major media continues to slip and slide away are we going to have to spend time sorting out what is news and what is really hidden PR? While there are a lot of nicely up front bloggers and tweeters out there, the anonymity afforded by the web means sorting out the wheat from the chaff is not easy.
I didn’t even notice the missing word, as I copied it directly from the post. “Media has to take a great deal . . . “
“Media has take a great deal of responsibility for its own slide into irrelevance.”
Now that is one heck of an insight, and it applies equally to PR’s rush to master the digital universe.
Way too long a comment for me to simply reply in a couple of tweets.
Journalists and media organizations have done very little to use all the tools, skills and experience at their disposal to actually sit up and say “here we are and here is what we are good at”.
As the role and place for print and electronic media is eroded there is very little in PR from media organizations pointing out the advantages of an investigative report, why an experienced reporter on the scene of a demonstration is a bonus, or why an editor who has spent a number of years cultivating sources and reporters actually helps tell a story.
Where is the Canadian Association of Journalists when it comes to saying here is what a journalist actually does for a living and not as a hobby?
Broadcasters should do a little less whining to the CRTC and a little more public outreach suggesting they have a real role in the modern media world.
Most media organizations go to a great deal of time and/or expense commissioning or reporting on public opinion polls and at the end of the report launch into “this poll is accurate to … 9 times out of …”. Yet in a New York Minute they’ll rave about the thousands of people who have signed up for an online ‘petition’.
Media has take a great deal of responsibility for its own slide into irrelevance.
I don’t think Ira’s piece made it to air because it was making the case for news. At least I hope that wasn’t a reason. Rather I hope it made it to air because it presents a journalistic investigation of the Future of News in the Age of Social Media.
I do however think that reporters, associations of reporters, media companies and umbrella media organizations should actually get tother and do a little PR work.
They’re hurting badly and if we lose too many good reporters or whole newspapers, just what will many bloggers, blog about and tweeeters, tweet?
Mike