[This article was first published in the August/September issue of Bermudian Business]

A new generation of cheaper, faster and easy-to-use digital tools is making and breaking the news, transforming the global media business and redefining our very notion of what constitutes news.

By Chris Gibbons

In June this year two events on opposite sides of the world illustrated dramatically how technology is rapidly changing the news – how it is gathered, delivered and consumed.

In Iran, citizens protesting the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used camera phones, text messages, and the new generation of internet tools such as YouTube, Facebook, blogs and Twitter – to help organise mass street protests and broadcast their outrage and graphic shots of brutality by the Iranian authorities to the world.

This form of “Citizen journalism” is not new – the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the 7/07 London bombings and Hurricane Katrina are earlier examples – but what made Iran significant was that on the weekend  the story broke, it was the only news as major networks like CNN and BBC were caught on the back foot. Then, when the networks were banned from filming in Iran, it became the mainstream news content itself despite the Iranian Government’s moves to block text messaging and internet access. As one protestor “tweeted” from the streets: “One Person = One Broadcaster”.

It was, claimed new media commentator Clay Shirky of New York University, the first revolution to have been “catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media”.

Meanwhile, a less dramatic but equally significant event was taking place in Bermuda following Premier Dr. Ewart Brown’s controversial decision to bring four former Guantanamo Bay inmates to the Island without consulting the Governor, the British Government or his Cabinet.

Anger at Dr. Brown’s handling of the issue and what was seen as his increasingly autocratic style of leadership tore across the internet like wildfire. On the Saturday they arrived in Bermuda, the Bermuda Sun website, which normally averages 30,000-35,00 unique visitors a week, clocked a staggering 400,000 visitors and more than a million page views.

A series of protests was organised and co-ordinated largely through texts, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter while photos and video of the events – which attracted as many as 2,000 people on the day Parliament debated a vote of no confidence in Dr. Brown – were quickly broadcast via YouTube, Facebook and blogs.

On my own small blog, on the days I posted videos showing some of the protest speeches in full page views shot to more than 1,000 a day. Not figures to keep TV executives awake at night, admittedly, but extrapolate that across thousands of similar blog posts and “tweets”, all linking back and forth around the world, and you get an idea of how a news event even in Bermuda can today be disseminated to a global audience on a hitherto unparalleled scale.

Bill Zuill, editor of The Royal Gazette, called it “a coming of age” for new media in Bermuda. “It was a fascinating example of how a story can take off, not only through ourselves and the Sun doing e-mail alerts and updates but through the whole social network phenomenon and the viral spread of news.”
Andrew Sullivan, writing in the London Sunday Times about the Iran protests, calls this phenomenon “journalistic pointillism … history rendered in the collective scattered mind and it has never happened before – millions upon millions of tiny telegram messages sent into the world … something changed that will transform the way we cover and consume breaking news”.

Journalism’s historic role as ‘gatekeeper’ of the news is being challenged not only by new technology and online competitors but by the very audience it serves. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University notes: “The audience is now an active, important participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information, with or without the help of mainstream news media.”

“The internet and technology has provided for greater democratisation of news,” believes Walton Brown, founder of market research company Research Innovations Ltd. and media businesses including the now defunct Bermuda News Network website. “There’s a greater level of immediacy and it allows for the global transition of data which is a fundamental shift in how information is shared. What you see emerging are ‘nodes of news’ that are generated spontaneously. No one has directed them – it is just people having an interest in a particular topic and the information is passed on.”
Major news organisations like CNN, the BBC and the New York Times now routinely use Facebook and Twitter to engage their audience while their websites have become multimedia hubs offering additional, constantly updated text, audio and video.

In Bermuda, The Royal Gazette and the Bermuda Sun are shifting the focus of their business online, using social media and e-mail alerts to push their content to a wider audience and drive readers to their websites. Both sites are updated regularly with breaking news and occasionally video reports.
The Gazette’s Facebook page, for example, has more than 2,800 “friends” – a fraction of the paper’s 13,500 circulation – but it is updated regularly and its posts and links are read and shared by a far wider audience.

By contrast, the websites of the Island’s main TV and radio broadcasters, ZBM and VSB are barely functional and neither site streams or archives content, although ZBM actively uses Facebook to post breaking news. CITV, the Government-run cable channel, streams content live on the web, as does Hott 107.5, which also posts entertainment news feeds.

“There are a lot of things we’re looking at that we’d like to do but things are very tight and unless we’re going to make money at it, we’re not going to do it,” explains VSB’s owner Kenny DeFontes.

Nevertheless it is an exciting time to be a journalist, says Bill Zuill. “It puts newspapers back in the position of being able to break news which we haven’t had for more than 60 years, before radio, along with the ability to tell the story in whatever medium best suits it.

“The Uighur story was a classic example of how the world has become an incredibly small place. Twenty years ago, you would write a story and it wouldn’t necessarily go anywhere outside these 20 square miles but today, everything is just out there, the world picks up on it and puts its interpretation on it and you have very little control over it. That’s a healthy thing in many ways but whether you are a journalist, CEO or a political leader, it makes you a lot more accountable and you have to be a lot more careful about what you write and say.”

Dr. Brown’s Government, which has made no bones about its distrust of the media and the Gazette in particular, has been quick to capitalise on the opportunities offered by new technology – Premier Brown even announced the 2007 election on YouTube. It cancelled nearly $1 million-worth of advertising with the Gazette saying that it was going to focus on online advertising. Postcards sent to all households in May proclaimed “out with old, in with the new – get Government news when you want it” and directed residents to Government’s YouTube channel, 105 Front Street; its Facebook page; its CITV television channel for nightly press conferences; and gov.bm for daily press releases. Dr. Brown also has plans for a new daily newspaper, although these seem to have been put on hold due to the current economic downturn.

Walton Brown says cheaper technology has lowered the cost of entry for a greater number of news entities. “Bermuda Sports Network [see sidebar below], for example, fills an unmet need. It allows a much broader range of sporting news than what you see in print or on TV. Bermuda today has a very static media structure but I believe very soon you’re going to see a fundamental change in how news is presented and delivered as we’ve seen in other technology-driven societies. In Bermuda we haven’t really seen that technology applied to news dissemination.”

Raymond Seymour, director of the Computer Society of Bermuda, says: “News alerts are becoming more important than the newspaper itself and the web is becoming a much more valuable proposition than a newspaper which is recording what happened yesterday. The shift that has taken place is that blogs and social networks have become the first point of contact, not the newspaper or TV.

Indeed around the world, newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive as readers – especially younger people – abandon print for free and easily accessible news online or via smartphones while the economic downturn has hit advertising revenues hard. In the US, the New York Times and Boston Globe are in deep financial trouble and many major cities may not have a daily paper by 2010.
Bermuda’s newspapers say ad revenue, already hammered by the rise of free classified websites like eMoo, is flat at best. The Sun claims 12,000 sales of both its bi-weekly editions while the Gazette – whose parent company Bermuda Press saw half yearly profits plunge by a third this year – admits to circulation sliding about 3% a year, down to a daily average of 13,500 from its 1980s peak of around 19,000.

Yet while sales of the printed paper fall, the Gazette has never been more widely read – according an April 2008 survey for the paper by Urban & Associates, the Gazette and its website are read by some 88% of the Island’s adult population. The Gazette website attracts on average 22,000 unique visitors a day, almost half of them Bermuda-based – but of course most of them don’t pay for the privilege.

“We’re breaking even with the website [through advertising],” says Zuill. “But getting the type of returns that newspapers have historically made is another. The business model that was supposed to work was that you would make enough in your advertising to provide the content for free. Right now, industry wide, that’s not working and personally I don’t think the industry has any choice but to find some sort of paying or subscription model. We devalue what we do by giving it away free.”
The few successful online subscription models, like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, have unique content that people can’t get anywhere else and the Gazette, as the Island’s biggest news organisation, may have a similar opportunity.

“I think we have to add some value to the website to make that palatable but I think that’s something we can do,” says Bill Zuill. “I think it’s much harder for papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post where people have so much choice and it only takes one paper to stay free and the model doesn’t work.

“We have to stop thinking of ourselves as simply newspaper businesses and think of ourselves as being information providers and we’re going to provide that information by whatever means available, whether its video, Twitter, or RSS feeds to phones, we need to harness those technologies to deliver news to people or direct them to the website.”

Walton Brown shares wider concerns about how new media, with its emphasis on opinion and the quick soundbite, is impacting society generally. “There is a disturbing trend that younger people seem not to be taking the time to take in information, which is what news is,” he says. “They would rather take the ‘lazy man’s option’ and listen to talk shows and use that as a basis for information when most of it is just opinion. There is a danger of ‘dumbing down’ in terms of how people get to understand issues.”

Consequently newspapers and broadcasters are trying to redefine their role and value. Bermuda Sun deputy editor Don Burgess says while something like Facebook provides a useful barometer of what readers are interested in, the established media’s ability to “skim off the junk and the untruths” and offer context and analysis is more important than ever to make sense of today’s cacophonous new media world.

Bill Zuill agrees. “Whatever our faults, journalists are trained to be skeptical and sift through information and sometimes through experience or instinct to know when things just don’t smell right,” he says.

However the proliferation of new technologies and platforms is putting a strain on already limited resources at a time when revenue and profits are falling.

At the Gazette, just one employee works full-time on the website while its 30-strong newsroom of reporters, editors and photographers pitches in where needed but it is not yet equipped to sustain a full-on multimedia operation.

“Doing a crafted story with video takes several hours and that’s time a reporter is not doing something else,” he explains. “Also, you can’t just take the first paragraph of a story for the paper and throw it up as a tweet. Material needs to be rewritten and we don’t have the time or staff to do that for every platform.”

The Bermuda Sun, the first Bermuda news organisation to go online in 1995, has just 11 editorial staff. It plans to step up its presence on Facebook and Twitter as well as closer integration with Bermuda.com, the tourist site owned by parent company Media House. Burgess says the paper is also looking at other revenue models based around subscription or cable TV-style packages of access to specific content.

“Were constantly looking at ways to make our website more interactive with readers,” he said. “The more you have the community involved, the better the product is going to be because we simply can’t be everywhere.”

Web advertising has tended to be cheaper than print but that is changing as advertisers and publishers alike realise the real value of targeted ads with measurable results through page views and click-throughs to corporate websites and stores.

Earlier this year, for example, Capital G took the unusual step of advertising to Bermuda customers via global websites such as BBC News, Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal, where Bermuda users were targeted with Capital G banner ads. If other Bermuda firms follow that strategy, it could further squeeze revenues for local media.

Walton Brown says his Bermuda News Network site folded in part because advertisers weren’t prepared to pay the prices needed to sustain the site. “We know through research globally that print advertising has declined over the last two years and more advertisers are putting money into internet-driven entities because they see the opportunities. Bermuda hasn’t evolved yet to the point where people are paying a fair market rate for advertising online.”

For the island’s electronic media, especially TV, the future may be even more challenging. Kenny Defontes says ad revenue is down 10% at VSB while ZBM is reported to be in serious financial trouble.
“I’m very concerned about the future,” says Defontes, who sees the industry squeezed on the one hand by cable networks who do not pay to carry local stations, and by increased competition from newcomers like Hott 107, satellite radio, the internet and especially Government. “It’s not a level playing field. We simply can’t compete with CITV in terms of salary or equipment,” he says.

TV and radio remain powerful local media influences, especially around the drive-time commuter slots, prime-time news, live events and talk shows, but TV audiences seem to be aging and declining as younger viewers opt to consume media from an increasing variety of sources rather than sit and watch the evening news.

Defontes admits candidly that he has “no idea” what VSB’s audience figures are (a 2008 Royal Gazette survey by Urban & Associates showed VSB TV reaching 16% or 7,500 of Bermuda adults with ZBM reaching 41% or 19,800, and CITV about 2% or 1,100). He said: “All I look at is the revenue from sponsors and news is our number one product across radio and TV; cricket is number two.” However he is looking closely at generating revenue from other sources than regular advertising. Down the road, he believes local TV news will be restricted to closed-circuit broadcasting on cable networks and doesn’t rule out some form of internet-based operation.

TV technology itself is changing rapidly. Video-on-demand capability and internet connectivity is already being built into the next generation of TV sets and the ability to watch what you want, when you want is going to be critical to the future of TV.

Hulu, NBC’s hugely successful on-demand video website, already streams more than 1,250 TV shows from 150 broadcasters to US consumers using any regular web browser. NBC plans to roll the service out internationally and integrate it into TVs and mobile devices. The fact that it is already able to charge advertisers more per thousand viewers to buy online space for premium shows like The Simpsons than for the same shows on TV, suggests a paradigm shift is underway.

Newspapers may look very different in the near future too. Devices like Amazon’s Kindle Reader, which wirelessly delivers digital editions of newspapers and magazines, are already on the market. Light, flexible one-sheet plastic e-papers that allow you to read, navigate and refresh a publication as if it were a web page are currently being market tested in Europe.

“I don’t think the newspaper is going to disappear,” says Bill Zuill, “but in 10 years time it will be a much smaller part of the business and will likely look quite different.”

“Bermuda is still very much a newspaper culture,” says Don Burgess. “I think as we see a transition from younger to older readers it may change down the line but right now people in Bermuda are very attached to their newspapers.”

As for the electronic media, Kenny Defontes says the survival of independent TV and radio news is essential for Bermuda but is less sure of where the industry may be even in five years time.
“I’d like to think we’ll still be here,” he says. “I hope so – but I honestly don’t know.”

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SIDEBAR

Bermuda Sports Network: a new game plan

Bermuda Sports Network, which started up in October 2008, is an example of how faster internet access and digital technology is changing the local media landscape.

The brainchild of Lamone Woods, a former computer science teacher at Berkeley Institute, and Kevin Mayes, a graduate of top digital arts school Full Sail and head programmer at reinsurance company Validus Re, BSN is providing a video showcase for local athletes and sports events.

Visitors to the BSN website can select current and archived video clips of some 15 local sports, ranging from comprehensive highlights of the recent Island Soccer League (ISL) season to all-star games and school sports as well as interviews and profiles.

Armed with digital video cameras, a TriCaster portable production system and a pair of Mac computers, the pair’s Crimson Multimedia company can broadcast or stream live events to the internet or to TV – and produce souvenir DVDs afterwards. “We can shoot up to six cameras at one time,” explains Woods, 38. “Before you needed a whole lot of expensive equipment. Now we can set up on one desk and we’re ready to go.”

The fledgling network streamed this year’s ISL games live and experimented successfully with a pay-per-view event, charging viewers $35 to watch the Teachers Rugby Club boxing night. The site does not, as yet, cover sports news as such and some of its content lacks context but it clearly has potential.

Woods says the site is attracting around 30,000 page views a month and such is the demand for their video production service that he quit his teaching job in June to run the company full-time.
BSN’s combination of providing local content – often of minor sports starved of mainstream media coverage – and technical know-how has already got the attention of the established media. It has already shared video footage with VSB and is in talks with The Royal Gazette and the local cable networks about possible partnerships.

“Our vision is to become the ESPN of Bermuda,” says Woods, noting that the sports TV giant started out filming local school sports in Connecticut.

At present, the full potential of the site is hampered by Bermuda’s sluggish residential internet speeds. “In Bermuda the infrastructure is not really set up for video-on-demand,” explains Woods. “Cablevision has a 4Mbs service but that’s not megabytes it’s megabits, which translates down to about 512 kilobytes per second and that’s about the fastest we have here. Many Caribbean countries have 8 megabyte services or higher and Japan has a gigabit service! We’re on the low scale here.”