Multi-media

This week`s readings: “Free! Why $ 0.00 Is the future of Business” by Chris Anderson and “ Make money around free content” from Wired How To Wiki.

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Today we take it for granted that we can get news and information, and communicate for free on the internet. Why pay for a newspaper when you can get free news online? Why send text messages (SMS) to your friends when you can chat for free online? As Anderson (2008, p.4) argues “the web has become the land of the free”.

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The big question is how can free news pay for good quality journalism? The answer is offcourse through advertising. The pressure to keep and get consumers for the news media is about making money. The more audience, the more advertisers. While the advertisements in newspapers usually have a set fee, the advertiser on the internet pays for every click, view and links to their ad.

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Some newsgroups have also found other ways to earn money. For example the Norwegian newspaper VG develop pictures and have their own weight club that people can join by paying fee. I guess it should concern us that a newspaper has a club that moves far away from what we call journalism. But the development of the media world has change the way newsgroups can make money, and this is one of the outcomes. What worries me is if good journalism will survive this.

The multi media story “Drawings from the killing fields of Darfur” is a strong story. The structure of the story with pictures, text, audio and pictures-slides is a good and effective way to get through to the reader. It makes the story stronger than by just using text. The structure gives the audience the opportunity to choose which pathway to take.

A story like this is better told like a multi-media story. The picture is the strongest part in a story like this, and pictures get easier through to the audience feelings.

The strongest part of this story is the drawings done by the kids. It is heartbreaking to see what the kids experienced, and that those bad memories are still so strong for them.

For me this is a good way of telling a story such as the “Drawings from the killing fields of Darfur”. But I wish there was a bit more text for to give me more information. After I saw this story I sit with all of these questions about what happened. But maybe this is one of the effects the producer wanted; Making people wounder and think.