Two Old Knight News Challenge Proposals (that were rejected last year)

Here are excerpts from two rejected proposals I wrote for the Knight News Challenge.

The first proposal is about how I think automation
could help improve the payment/rights system in journalism
and the second proposal is about how I think we could improve the newsroom
to facilitate better and faster multimedia training.

Both proposals were rejected.

***

1) I would like to research and develop an open source automated program which tracks online ad-revenues made from news content and handles monthly royalty payments to news and media producers.

With basic web-statistics like Google Analytics, online media companies can now know exactly how much revenue is made precisely on every page of their websites. The profits generated from every online story (multimedia or otherwise) can be determined with very high precision. This is unlike print, where it is not possible to calculate exactly how much ad revenue your stories have generated because that is not how print works.

Given this new economic and statistical reality, it only seems fair for online media publications to share profits with their content producers. This system would effectively reward news content producers on the merit and quality of their productions because stories that get more views would make more money over time. This could perhaps give media employees more economic motivation to retrain, learn more, or perfect their job skills.

Because web stories can be archived ‘permanently’ online, profit-sharing royalties could serve as retirement for media professionals if their stories have considerable replay value or long-term appeal.

One example of an ad-revenue profit-sharing model is MetaCafe’s Producer Rewards program. Metacafe is similar to Youtube, and with their producer rewards program, Metacafe shares revenues that they have made from advertising which they have placed on the same pages as content producer’s uploaded videos.

Some of the top producers on Metacafe have already made over $40,000 within the past year just off of the sharing of advertising profits.

Imagine if at least half of the revenue generated from news and media content was given to the content producer.

The automated program I would develop would make it easy and cheap for newspapers and other media outlets to pay their content producers royalties. Ideally on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

(Edited) This software could potentially ‘rescue’ the journalism industry.
It could potentially revolutionize the economics of the entire global journalism industry.

It will more effectively reward journalists and other media producers on the proven strength and merit of their work.

Over time it will increase the quality of published journalism and media because it will put more money behind quality.

I know many multimedia gurus who I could get on my team to help produce the open source software with the greatest precision.

***

2) Multimedia Multiversity

I would like to invent a new kind of classroom (or newsroom) for all kinds of media professionals.

I would like to invent a Multimedia Multiversity (or newsroom) in which there is a classroom that is circular and all the seats are arranged in a circle. In front of every seat, there exists a computer touch-screen for all the students or media professionals who are interacting in this environment.

There are two monitors in front of every subject, one connected to the Internet that the subject controls, and one monitor that shows whatever is on the teacher’s (or moderator’s) interactive computer screen.

The teacher (or editor or moderator) has a control switchboard which allows them to temporarily transfer control of the non-interactive monitors to project the interactive monitor of whomever is speaking or “has the floor” during a discussion, lecture, or debate.

In addition, there is a circular dry-erase board (which spans all around the classroom) behind the seats, in which students, teachers, professionals, (or politicians alike), can get up and draw or write notes behind them. Due to the circular nature of this room, anybody in this environment can see each others notes with relative ease and transparency.

This model would use a dialectic, Socratic seminar approach. The room itself would be structured in the form of a panopticon.

All debates could be recorded with a camera in the middle of the room and the recorded videos could be made available freely (or for a fee) online as an educational resource to anybody in the world who wants to watch them.

Ideally, these seminar rooms would be constructed to seat no more than 18-24 people, seeing as how smaller class sizes are more conducive to Socratic debate, analysis, and dialectic.

Moreover, each seat would have the ability to project a video image of somebody in another location who is participating in the discussion but is unable to be there physically in person due to geographical constraints. These participants could even be reporting from “on the scene” at a news event.

I think this classroom model makes sense because universities and newsrooms can’t keep up with the progress being made in multimedia journalism and communications.

This model could accelerate and enrich the learning process with media as well as democratize the teaching process, since more and more college students (or subordinates in newsrooms) are surpassing their professors technically speaking in the fields of multimedia journalism and communications.

It is an environment that could prove very conducive to the formation, maximization, and application of raw creative mental energy.

It’s purposes could be equally useful for government officials, education, journalism, politics, advertising, public relations, or even courtrooms.

(Edited) Imagine a scenario in which the active participants in this experimental classroom were graduates from various fields of communication from all around the world.

There is no telling how valuable the research and knowledge attained from this project could be for the journalism industry and society as a whole.

This is something that could change the world by changing the way we think, learn, work, and communicate. By accelerating communication with this environment structure, we could very well accelerate our capacity as a species to solve a great deal of the world’s problems.

(Originally published January 3, 2008 on Lightstalkers)