Is Good News, news?

It’s  Good News week at a Huff that’s flush and ready to play. Arianna Huffington introduces news with out the ‘bad’ (bit like Adrianna without a ‘d’).

Preview

Adrianna has more good news

In the late 70′s (and there’s probably been many since) a survey in the US asked readers to define news and the majority (80% I think) said that only ‘bad news’ was news and  ‘good news’ wasn’t.

But what is news? It’s an interesting question, especially today. With the proliferation of  social media and the publication of  what Andrew Keen calls ‘gossip’, Huffington might just be swimming with the current.

In 2002 I launched a nightly series on the ABC called George Negus Tonight  (6:30 pm slot, four nights a week). Very quickly the show found an audience – a huge following for that key, but under played slot – doubling and sometimes even trebling previous figures. For a while that George became more popular at 6:30 on Aunty that even Dr Who (hard to believe, I know, but it was true).

It’s also true that George has a pull factor, even at 70 years of age (his Q score is – was – in the high 80′s), but GNT did well  not only because of George, but because it offered good news stories 4 nights a week at a time (6:30pm) when other networks were giving us more doom and gloom.

The audience in Australia were ready for some inspirational stuff (I had a problem and this is how I dealt with it and you can too),  maybe with the US economy in tatters, the presidential race and all its vexatious media hotting up – maybe it’s just as Huffington writes, time for a change and some good news:

I’m delighted to announce the launch of HuffPost Good News, a new section that will shine a much-needed spotlight on what’s inspiring, what’s positive, what’s working — and what’s missing from what most of the media chooses to cover. (Arianna Huffington 12/1/12)

She just might be right. Media largely chooses to ignore good news and focuses on gore and desperation instead. Huffington adds:

Everywhere around the country, people and communities are doing amazing things, overcoming great odds, and facing real challenges with perseverance, creativity and grace. But these stories are rarely told online, in newspapers, and on TV (especially if you live in a primary state being bombarded with negative attack ads).

And with social media being as prolific as it is (13,000,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube in 2010), Huffington has a ready source of content. If she chooses to use it she’ll need to curate it before she aggregates it:

HuffPost Good News will be using a variety of storytelling tools to bridge the wide gap that separates the world as it is from the world as portrayed by the bulk of the media.

So will this be a ‘worlds best home videos and stories’, a collection of content sourced from the public? Huffington’s comments below offer a clue:

These stories of real people and their countless acts of empathy and ingenuity are overshadowed not only by actual crises — and sadly, there are plenty — but, more often, by the various manufactured crises sucking up precious media oxygen, from the deadline-pushing theatrics of debt ceiling debates and government shutdowns to the Balloon Boys, Casey Anthonys and Koran-burning pastors of the world. The excuse often given by the media is that these stories are “what the public wants.” Well, we don’t believe that, and HuffPost Good News will be our answer, and challenge, to that cynicism.

Who writes or produces ‘these stories’? Are they the stories ‘the public wants’ ? Is that just an excuse, or in Huffington’s case a challenge – a ‘call’ to arms to?  Stories like this, where a nurse gave one of her kidneys to her ailing patient – but written by who – you or the HuffPost?

A modern day Florence Nightingale

Huffington says they will be ‘stories of real people’ – but are they written by real people? Is she offering a vehicle for citizen journalism written by citizens? Will she make an offer to ‘pay for play’ – send in your best and if we like it and use it, you’ll get paid for it? Or, will she pay her journos to ‘curate’ the content generated by other agencies?

For the skeptics out there this could be exactly what the UGC world has been waiting for a wake up call. If you see your neighbors work online at the HuffPost, you might consider moving your style of UGC from ‘gossage’,  to a  level of reporting.

So check out HuffPost Good News. Here’s hoping it sets off copycat acts of good news reporting across the media. Please use the comment section to point us toward the good news we’re missing and, as always, let us know what you think.

Watch this space to find out who’s reporting the good news at the HuffPost – you or them – corporate citizen journalists or citizen journalists.

Curating or Aggregating

Not a media junky, then you may not have heard of content aggregation and curation. Yet they are current buzz-words in social media that can pit creators against curators.

What is Twitter or that App that gives you your news stories doing for you – aggregating or curating?

The Distinction

The words ‘aggregation’ and ‘curation’ can have various meanings, but put simply, aggregation is content creation, and curation is content sourcing, selecting and sharing.

Content Aggregation

Unlike curation, content creators and technology drive aggregation. People create unique content, and that content is aggregated or shared via apps, websites, news services, search engines or RSS feeds. Content aggregation always leads back to the original piece of content, so content creators like it. Aggregation is generally done by machines, algorithms, auto-aggregators.

Content Curation

People seeking out specific content, vetting it and sharing it with communities are known as content curators. They don’t need to create the content – rather they building a network of quality links to outside or external content that, in their opinion, is the best. A librarian advising you on a bunch of specific titles is/was a curator.

‘By recommending specific content to their community, they attract people that are looking for a central knowledge hub in their niche-looking for some one to follow or to be followed – someone of influence who is good at spotting other peoples good work and sharing it with their followers, as on Twitter.

So is there a difference between Twitter and that News App on which you build your paper from different sources.

Twitter, where you choose content and pass it on, share it through tweets or re-tweets, is definitely content curation. But then it’s also an aggregation site – you may be writing your own content (aggregation), but you are also selecting it to publish and then sharing it (curation).

So, lets take that news App where you choose the type of story and the media outlet you want. Well, the choice of story genre you make is an act of curating genre, but the story you get is an example aggregation. Confused – you’re not alone. Well, you didn’t choose the story just the genre. When you read the story and recommend it on Twitter its an act of curation.

What about when your News App—which is an example of curating genre (you choose the genre) and aggregating story (an algorithm chooses the story)—asks you “Do You want More of This type”? Beats me.

Well author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky  puts it this way, “Curation comes up when search stops working,” and “curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.” I’ll translate in Croatian – he means search is aggregation (driven by algorithms) and your choice of the search options (the results) is curation.

The value of creating your own content – aggregating – still rocks. But when you choose a platform on which to share yours and other carefully selected content, or when the stories that aggregating News App has ‘algorithmed’ your way and you saved carefully using Read It Later, in order to build a community and save the world on the cheap – that’s curation.

Question; Does the information you curate become and act of aggregation when you pass it on? Is the answer ‘yes’ if you pass it on to anyone and everyone (Tweet it) and ‘no’ if you pass it on to your community? But are the people that follow you your community or just the one’s you follow? It gets tricky doesn’t it.

So what’s the Value of Content Curation (Web source can’t find URL)

As we’ve mentioned, content aggregation is fast becoming content curation – for these excellent reasons.

1: Your community doesn’t have to go anywhere else for information
2: They stay longer on your social media pages
3: This improves brand identity, trust and eventually increases profits
4: You become an expert or influencer in your field because of ‘collection’ not ‘creation’
5: Sites like Twitter, Stumble Upon, Alltop and Flipboard help you curate content

What Does This Mean For Your Business? (Web source can’t find URL)

If you’ve been struggling to keep up with the relentless content demand on your social media sites – it doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. Content curation is just as important as creation and can take your business places – without the headache or expense of having to generate unique content. If you can’t afford articles for a while, then spend that month gathering the best content in your field.

How Do I Get Started? (Web source can’t find URL)

Gather the most popular keywords in your niche and use news syndication services like Google, Yahoo and MSN to source great content. Bookmark excellent blogs you come across. Use sites like StumbleUpon to get great content that doesn’t rank well for keywords – Twitter is also a good place to look for fresh links.

Syndication – not another one of those ‘ion’ words.

Content aggregation (the automated gathering of links) can be seen on sites like Google News. Overall, this type of aggregation has been seen as a positive thing for content creators and publishers, and up until very recently, it was left to technology. Content creation, meanwhile, was a human effort.

But all that changes with curation — the act of human editors adding their work to the machines that gather, organize and filter content.

For more see Social Media Magic; CMSWire and one other URL that I used and lost (sorry to the author).