TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Unlawful Eskom strike costing South Africa three stages of load shedding

      1 July 2022

      Striking Eskom workers will face consequences: De Ruyter

      1 July 2022

      The AI tool that has changed my life as a developer

      1 July 2022

      Google.co.za is down and the domain is pending deletion

      1 July 2022

      US files charges over South African bitcoin fraud scheme

      1 July 2022
    • World

      Meta girds for ‘fierce’ headwinds

      1 July 2022

      Graphics card prices plummet as crypto demand dries up

      30 June 2022

      Bitcoin just had its worst quarter in a decade

      30 June 2022

      Samsung beats TSMC to 3nm chip production

      30 June 2022

      Napster plots crypto comeback

      29 June 2022
    • In-depth

      The NFT party is over

      30 June 2022

      The great crypto crash: the fallout, and what happens next

      22 June 2022

      Goodbye, Internet Explorer – you really won’t be missed

      19 June 2022

      Oracle’s database dominance threatened by rise of cloud-first rivals

      13 June 2022

      Everything Apple announced at WWDC – in less than 500 words

      7 June 2022
    • Podcasts

      How your organisation can triage its information security risk

      22 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E06 – ‘Apple Silicon’

      15 June 2022

      The youth might just save us

      15 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E05 – ‘Nvidia: The Green Goblin’

      8 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E04 – ‘The story of Intel – part 2’

      1 June 2022
    • Opinion

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022

      A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

      19 May 2022

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Top»Gigaom’s demise and the future of journalism

    Gigaom’s demise and the future of journalism

    Top By The Conversation16 March 2015
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Om Malik (image: Christopher Michel)
    Om Malik (image: Christopher Michel)

    Last week, prominent tech site Gigaom ceased operations with the terse note that it “recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time”. Started in 2006 by Om Malik, the site had raised about US$40m over that period to create a technology news site, an IT analysis business and another business running IT events. None of them could make enough money to cover the $400 000/month needed to keep the business going.

    For a site that covered the future of journalism and media in detail, it turned out that it had little insight into how to succeed in a landscape that is setting legacy media and digital media alike, in a continuous struggle to survive.

    The shutdown of Gigaom follows on the heels of AOL’s shutting down of two tech sites earlier this year. TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and Joystiq were both closed by AOL as part of its process of “simplifying the portfolio of brands”.

    The problem that digital media sites face is that, unlike traditional print where their markets are protected geographically, websites largely compete on a level playing field, albeit one that is determined in part by Google’s (and others) ranking of sites in its search engine. Every tech story that is released gets rapidly echoed by literally hundreds of sites.

    Take a recent article about Microsoft’s decision to release its personal assistant technology Cortana across multiple platforms. A search in Google News brings up 290 versions of the same story.

    The ultimate irony is that the originating “exclusive” for this story from Reuters actually comes 15th in the list of news sorted by Google in order of “relevance”.

    As the majority of these sites make money from advertising, the inclusion of stories on any given site is motivated not by journalism, good or bad, but by the need to fill the site with constantly refreshing content. In fact, the job of journalism becomes solely one of copy editing, adjusting an already published story for style, format and length, for an individual site.

    The danger with this for those employed in this sector (or perhaps a blessing to finally convince them to do something else more worthwhile), is that computers are getting very much better at being able to generate this type of content. Algorithms will be able to take a press release, newswire story, or simply any other story circulating on the Internet and generate a new one with the right mix of specific language tied to brands, advertising, and possibly reader interest.

    Recycled news
    This state of affairs is not simply related to technology news. Taking any random headline from the New York Times — for example a story about CIA funds falling into the hands of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan gives 83 articles all repeating the same story as reported by the Times. At least in this case, the New York Times appears top of the list in the Google News search.

    The senior director of news and social products at Google Richard Gingras and Sally Lehrman, a fellow of the Markulla Center for Applied Ethics, have suggested that the current situation has eroded the public’s [trust] of journalism in general. They quote reports from the Pew Research Center showing that “55% of Americans said they simply did not expect a fair, full and accurate account of the days’ events and issues. As many as 26% said they did not trust the news to get facts right.”

    Gingras and Lehrman’s solution to this lack of trust in journalism is the aptly titled, “The Trust Project”, a new effort led by the authors and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. This project proposes that all journalists should disclose their expertise and any conflicts of interest and engage in rigorous citation in their writing. The sites that they write for should also have a published code of ethics.

    While these aims are highly laudable and should be common practice, it is not clear that it will solve the ultimate problem that the vast majority of content on media sites on the Internet is derivative. One estimate by journalist Nick Davies claims that only 12% of stories featured in the UK’s quality press were original, the rest were what is often called “churnalism”. On the Internet, that number will be higher just by the nature of the sheer volume of content that is produced every day.

    Journalism academic Jeff Jarvis has suggested additional recommendations to the Trust Project that involve Google News ranking derivative stories below the original sources in their search results. Judging the ultimate quality of articles in this way might prove difficult to do algorithmically.

    Gigaom’s passing will largely go unnoticed. There is an endless supply of other sites filling the void, although a vanishingly small number of them will be paying journalists or operating as a business making a profit.The Conversation

    • David Glance is director of the UWA Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia
    • This article was originally published on The Conversation
    AOL David Glance Gigaom Joystiq Om Malik TUAW
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleFirestorm over Cape Town newspaper
    Next Article Power system remains stable: Eskom

    Related Posts

    Meta girds for ‘fierce’ headwinds

    1 July 2022

    Graphics card prices plummet as crypto demand dries up

    30 June 2022

    Bitcoin just had its worst quarter in a decade

    30 June 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Billetterie simplifies interactions between law firms and clients

    30 June 2022

    Think herding cats is tricky? Try herding a cloud

    29 June 2022

    How your business can help hybrid workers effectively

    28 June 2022
    Opinion

    Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

    21 June 2022

    Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

    13 June 2022

    A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

    19 May 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.