A good friend sent me a link to a blog post called Scenes from the media revolution.

Thomas Lifson
A small terrestrial (i.e., the kind that uses normal tower-based transmission) broadcast television station, KFTY, Channel 50 in Santa Rosa, California, has fired its entire news staff and is going to rely on viewer-submitted material for news. Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle calls it

a nationally watched experiment in local television coverage. Over the next few months, the station’s management plans to ask people in the community — its independent filmmakers, its college students and professors, its civic leaders and others — to provide programming for the station.

Will they be paid? That’s being worked out. Who will cover the harder-edged stories? Some will be culled from local newspaper and TV online sites, [station executive] Spendlove said, and “other sources” that are still being discussed.

This blog post is really about Ideas for Integrating Independent and Traditional Media.

Deep down, or not so deep, mass firings is just what media people are afraid of. I think they should be afraid. I would be.

Do big media owners really care who makes the content they resell? As long as content is cheap and they have a good profit margin who cares what it is or who makes it? sarcasm (Notice how I didn’t write cheap and quality. Do you think a barrage of coverage about Anna Nicole Smith’s death is quality coverage? I don’t.)

The big problem is traditional media workers will be pit against independent media makers. If we bloggers and vloggers get involved for pay we will be in direct competition with traditional media workers. If you thought someone off the street with less experience in your business was going to take your job how would you feel? Would you fight against change?

Bloggers and Vloggers can live in harmony with traditional corporate TV workers. But it looks like TV workers will have to become more like bloggers and vloggers, not less. Not because bloggers and vloggers are cheaper. But because we use new media tools like we breath.

Maybe TV stations should hire full time and part time bloggers and vloggers who do not have journalism degrees or broadcast experience. Put them to work beside other media workers. Create environments where they can learn from each other. Don’t force Bloggers and Vloggers to become TV workers. Some how I think Journalism Schools will have to-do the same.

The blog I quoted quotes the following SF Gate article;
Tonight at 11, news by neighbors – Santa Rosa TV station fires news staff, to ask local folks to provide programming

I wrote the following on my AudioActivism blog on May 24th, 2006.

Techorati has announced a new business relationship with the Associated Press. Read more about it at Technorati Teams With The Associated Press to Connect Bloggers To More Than 440 Newspapers Nationwide.

I was once told that the real definition of a professional is someone who gets paid for what they do. We know that there is more to the definition. I bet if you were to compare bloggers with journalists you’d find we’re both professionals.

Real bloggers write and link because they love. We’re news and politics junkies. We like our info fresh and witty. This propels many of use to write like mad. So we write to give other bloggers what we want from them.

Most of us don’t do it for pay. So what happens when corporations like Technorati and AP get together to aggregate bloggers work and put it up on their websites? Pro business people are always saying nothing is free. So how is Technorati and AP paying bloggers for the services we’re providing them?

One form of payment could be the ‘Neato Effect’. This is when you see your name or something you wrote in the paper. The first couple of times its a rush. The realization that hundreds if not tens of thousands of people are reading what you wrote. For most people this rush is payment enough. What happens when you have a blog and millions of people all over the world read your writing every day? What about when a smart weekly newspaper recognizes you as an expert and pays you to write it? You become a professional. Many bloggers have become pros in one way or another. The ‘neato effect’ as a form of payment just ain’t going to do it for me. Or many of other good bloggers out there I suspect.

Another form of payment is in website traffic. If a local or national newspaper site links to your blog post whether purposely or automatically via Technorati you should get a few more hits. What is that worth to most bloggers? In dollars and cents probably not much. You need tens of thousands of unique visitors to make money on advertising. So a few more from a newspaper of two won’t make a real financial contribution. If Digg or Slashdot links to you then your hits might jump for a day or so but it’ll also cripple your site too. Your Google ranking could increase over time. This might help your ad revenue. But in the end isn’t this just gaming the system?

What if you don’t care about making money on your blog? What does Technorati, AP, or newspaper website have to pay you with then? How about respect as an subject matter expert. That’s good for some karma and community value. How about influence? Political power? Publicity for good causes? Social change? There has to be some other kind of fair trade value.

The fact is for profit groups (newspapers) and a not for profit groups (bloggers) exist with different values that aren’t always compatible. Even if you’re a blogger and want to make money doing it do you think newspapers need your blog enough to pay you well? Hell they can’t seem to pay stringers very well.

Bloggers freely available content is being hijacked. Technorati is helping us find each other and in return is cashing in huge. So will their partners. Main stream media needs us. We’re vanguards of the future. We write in the trenches and get dirty doing it. Its true that many pro journalists have seen the light and are innovating too. I respect old school journalists. Really!

Its the masses of people creating on read/write web that will fill the bank accounts of businesses in the future. How will individuals get in on this? The future will be a giant negotiation for digital labor. We have serious leverage. Content creators like bloggers have real value in their ability to be creative.

Until newspapers decided to admit bloggers are another kind of professional and treat us as such these new relationships just won’t be fair at all.