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The New Front Page
A provocative, timely account of the changing face of journalism from a pioneer of the new-media revolution
For a long time, media organisations have controlled the news, treating their audiences as products for advertisers. Yet as journalism has moved online and behind paywalls, the public is demanding more say in how the news is created. They are using blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to share stories, and selecting their sources to create their own ‘front page’.
In this lively, biting critique, media commentator Tim Dunlop explores the rise of the audience, and how unprepared the mainstream media has been for this changing balance of power. Drawing on his experiences as a prominent political blogger, he argues that the future of meaningful journalism — the sort we need in order to be informed citizens — will increasingly rely on journalists and editors taking the audience into their confidence and working with them, rather than against them.
The New Front Page is a passionate plea on behalf of those tired of being talked down to by the fourth estate. Perceptive and illuminating, it asks audiences and media to work together to hold the powerful to account, and to produce the sort of news and analysis that enriches public debate.
For a long time, media organisations have controlled the news, treating their audiences as products for advertisers. Yet as journalism has moved online and behind paywalls, the public is demanding more say in how the news is created. They are using blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to share stories, and selecting their sources to create their own ‘front page’.
In this lively, biting critique, media commentator Tim Dunlop explores the rise of the audience, and how unprepared the mainstream media has been for this changing balance of power. Drawing on his experiences as a prominent political blogger, he argues that the future of meaningful journalism — the sort we need in order to be informed citizens — will increasingly rely on journalists and editors taking the audience into their confidence and working with them, rather than against them.
The New Front Page is a passionate plea on behalf of those tired of being talked down to by the fourth estate. Perceptive and illuminating, it asks audiences and media to work together to hold the powerful to account, and to produce the sort of news and analysis that enriches public debate.
272 pages, Paperback
First published August 21, 2013
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27 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 1, 2014
This is one of two books on this topic I’ve read in quick succession. This one was the first and it discusses how Tim became involved in blogging. Now, I’d not really heard of Tim before reading this and nearly didn’t read it at all given that his blog was called ‘The Road to Surfdom’ – yep, a pretty clear reference to the book, which I started once and got so upset with I had to stop reading for issues to do with blood pressure. In the well trodden, long tradition of judging a book by its cover, the tit;le of his blog would otherwise have been enough for me to call the whole thing off. But what convinced me to read on was that Greg Jericho is quoted on the cover – and Jericho writes a nice recurring article in The Guardian Australia on economics that I read sometimes (and also the other book on this topic I’ve just finished reading) – so that saved Tim.
This is, in part, a kind of history of political blogging in Australia. Tim started blogging when he went to the US after finishing his PhD. This made the book very interesting, as he has interesting things to say about the differences in the political systems between the two countries and the impact these have on blogging and the media generally. Essentially, here in Australia elections are mostly paid for by the public through our taxes and voting is compulsory. These two differences with the US system means that politicians in Australia are much less likely to pay any attention to bloggers at all. The reason being that enthusiastic political animals in Australia are generally considered to be nut-cases, and so politicians ignore them with abandon. Now, they are probably considered that way in the US too, truth be told, but because these are exactly the kinds of people who vote in the US and also the kinds of people likely to encourage others to vote, political parties have to pander to them. So, politicians in the US are likely to turn up to things organised by political bloggers – whereas Australian politicians are remarkably unlikely to do that.
Australia also has one of the most concentrated media ownership regimes in the developed world. You know, about 70% of our newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch – what hope have we?
The bit of this I found most interesting, though, was right towards the end where he discusses some research conducted by Matthew Hindman in a book (my university library doesn’t have – ahhh!) called The Myth of Digital Democracy, in which he says that the myth is that anyone can access the world given a keyboard and something to say – you know, insert Norman Rockwell's painting Freedom of Speech here.
image:
The point, however, is that when you do the math, it turns out that, and to quote, “While the tail of the distribution includes many hundreds of thousands of political bloggers,’ Hindman says, ‘a small group of A-list bloggers actually gets more political blog traffic than the rest of the citizenry combined … a level of concentration in the top ten to 20 online sites that is actually greater than that which occurs in traditional media’. (p. 193)
Worrying stuff. A lot of this book says that traditional media has it coming – that they have existed in a privileged space with most of their revenue coming from advertising and with them not really having to pay much attention to the needs or wants of their audiences. This is a book whose author is one of those ‘in the name of the customer’ guys – and so, the fact the traditional media wants its audience to shut up and listen annoys him to the point of distraction. All the same, it is hard not to agree with him when he says things like, “It really is the height of hypocrisy, not to mention laziness, for the media to presume that people aren’t interested in politics because they seem less than enthralled by the way the media covers it.” (p. 195)
I really quite enjoyed this book – it is a quick read, but a worthwhile one. It also gives a nice history of Australian blogging and tells a few stories involved with this history that will annoy people from Australia in ways we should be annoyed. Tim wrote a blog for a while from within the stomach of the beast – aka Murdoch’s The Australian – as the token lefty. Reading about the issues that presented him are probably worth the cover price of the book.
This is, in part, a kind of history of political blogging in Australia. Tim started blogging when he went to the US after finishing his PhD. This made the book very interesting, as he has interesting things to say about the differences in the political systems between the two countries and the impact these have on blogging and the media generally. Essentially, here in Australia elections are mostly paid for by the public through our taxes and voting is compulsory. These two differences with the US system means that politicians in Australia are much less likely to pay any attention to bloggers at all. The reason being that enthusiastic political animals in Australia are generally considered to be nut-cases, and so politicians ignore them with abandon. Now, they are probably considered that way in the US too, truth be told, but because these are exactly the kinds of people who vote in the US and also the kinds of people likely to encourage others to vote, political parties have to pander to them. So, politicians in the US are likely to turn up to things organised by political bloggers – whereas Australian politicians are remarkably unlikely to do that.
Australia also has one of the most concentrated media ownership regimes in the developed world. You know, about 70% of our newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch – what hope have we?
The bit of this I found most interesting, though, was right towards the end where he discusses some research conducted by Matthew Hindman in a book (my university library doesn’t have – ahhh!) called The Myth of Digital Democracy, in which he says that the myth is that anyone can access the world given a keyboard and something to say – you know, insert Norman Rockwell's painting Freedom of Speech here.
image:
The point, however, is that when you do the math, it turns out that, and to quote, “While the tail of the distribution includes many hundreds of thousands of political bloggers,’ Hindman says, ‘a small group of A-list bloggers actually gets more political blog traffic than the rest of the citizenry combined … a level of concentration in the top ten to 20 online sites that is actually greater than that which occurs in traditional media’. (p. 193)
Worrying stuff. A lot of this book says that traditional media has it coming – that they have existed in a privileged space with most of their revenue coming from advertising and with them not really having to pay much attention to the needs or wants of their audiences. This is a book whose author is one of those ‘in the name of the customer’ guys – and so, the fact the traditional media wants its audience to shut up and listen annoys him to the point of distraction. All the same, it is hard not to agree with him when he says things like, “It really is the height of hypocrisy, not to mention laziness, for the media to presume that people aren’t interested in politics because they seem less than enthralled by the way the media covers it.” (p. 195)
I really quite enjoyed this book – it is a quick read, but a worthwhile one. It also gives a nice history of Australian blogging and tells a few stories involved with this history that will annoy people from Australia in ways we should be annoyed. Tim wrote a blog for a while from within the stomach of the beast – aka Murdoch’s The Australian – as the token lefty. Reading about the issues that presented him are probably worth the cover price of the book.
November 11, 2013
I've long been an admirer of Dunlop's writings on the changing media environment. It's an area i'm fascinated by, but have no firm views, so I very much respect those who are willing to commit quill to paper (or at lest abandon their delete key) and write about this subject.
Dunlop makes the excellent point that the way the audience engages the media is central to how media worked then and now, and that only by recognising this can a more sustainable and praise worthy media develop. Not that he has any time for the fools fantasy of 'citizen journalists'.
I should point out my dislike of bloggers as a general class. For all that I have been a blogger, and all their talk of equality, the model of blog communication is one of a 'leader' who blogs and 'followers' who comment. The hierarchy is substantial and works to the advantage of those who initiate, with the only real fight over readership (that is, control of the followers).
I was always more of a forum man, perhaps this is why I prefer twitter. Blogs if anything offer far less equality than their old media counter parts, and it may be some time until all people feel the capacity to contribute and challenge the story line that the first generation of bloggers felt.
Still, they were trend setters, and Tim rightly deserves a significant status in that era in Australia. He was one who crossed genres, crossed partisan lines and wrote good accessible content without believing the bullshit.
This book is highly recommended for those who want to understand what's going on with the new media space. This is a book that will only take you one rung up the ladder, but that's all the author promises, and all that any author could promise in these uncertain times.
Dunlop makes the excellent point that the way the audience engages the media is central to how media worked then and now, and that only by recognising this can a more sustainable and praise worthy media develop. Not that he has any time for the fools fantasy of 'citizen journalists'.
I should point out my dislike of bloggers as a general class. For all that I have been a blogger, and all their talk of equality, the model of blog communication is one of a 'leader' who blogs and 'followers' who comment. The hierarchy is substantial and works to the advantage of those who initiate, with the only real fight over readership (that is, control of the followers).
I was always more of a forum man, perhaps this is why I prefer twitter. Blogs if anything offer far less equality than their old media counter parts, and it may be some time until all people feel the capacity to contribute and challenge the story line that the first generation of bloggers felt.
Still, they were trend setters, and Tim rightly deserves a significant status in that era in Australia. He was one who crossed genres, crossed partisan lines and wrote good accessible content without believing the bullshit.
This book is highly recommended for those who want to understand what's going on with the new media space. This is a book that will only take you one rung up the ladder, but that's all the author promises, and all that any author could promise in these uncertain times.
September 18, 2016
A fascinating insight into the world of journalism as it transitions from one format to multi formats. There are some jaw-dropping descriptions of incredible interactions between the established media and its audience who also constitute the new media. Getting to grips with this fast evolution has been problematical for the newspaper empires whose management and journalists may be failing on a grand scale to realise that their survival depends on engagement with their audience. The existence of an organised media is vital to maintain a strong challenge to political manoeuvres that are not in the public interest. Paradoxically the media's reliance on New technologies to try to gauge public opinion is perhaps the instrument of their demise. To find out why you need to read this book! I can see it being an important part of third level journalism studies in the future. That's if they will still exist! A great read
December 13, 2014
Read this sometime ago. Dunlop makes some interesting distinctions between the new and old media and the changes brought forth by online journalism. He points out how the internet has challenged the authority and validity of old media and journalists and how the new online media is far more interactive and collaborative. Recommend it.
April 20, 2017
Good book, but if you already know well about blogging and social media you'd must read last two chapters and it'll be okay for you.
April 20, 2017
I read this book thanks to Blinkist.
The key message in this book:
Since the advent of the internet, the media landscape has evolved in many ways. A crucial part of this transformation has been the way it interacts with its audience and readership. Newspapers, radio and television once viewed the public as nothing more than a number that increased their advertising rates. But with the introduction and popularization of the internet and news blogs, the audience has become involved in every part of the production and publication of the news.
The key message in this book:
Since the advent of the internet, the media landscape has evolved in many ways. A crucial part of this transformation has been the way it interacts with its audience and readership. Newspapers, radio and television once viewed the public as nothing more than a number that increased their advertising rates. But with the introduction and popularization of the internet and news blogs, the audience has become involved in every part of the production and publication of the news.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews