Role of online newspapers' message forums

According to a recent study in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, entitled "Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities Through Online Newspaper Message Forum,"participation in online forums of US newspapers can increase participants' perception that they understand local communities better.

Associate Professor Jack Rosenberry at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY conducted a survey of 538 participants in message forums at the 80 local newspapers. Even though this study found the positive relationship between forum participation and better perception on community, such participation in online forums was not related to getting out and taking part in real-world community activities.

These findings indicate that online newspapers' forum can have "a mobilizing influence' but also imply that participants' engagements were more reflected by their existing social relationships and community involvement than the online community.

For more details, please go to here in which you can also download a PDF file of this research article.

Do you think that online information or communication behavior can lead to other acts on offline activities?

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Would you pay for New York Times on the Web?

Jan. 20th 2010, The New York Times Company announced that it will charge online readers for access to NYTimes.com.

"Starting in January 2011, a visitor toNYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge."

Many media analysts and scholars agree that it is time to figure our a new economic model of news business in the digital media ecology. It is known that 17 million readers a month in the U.S. visit NYTimes.com, but I am not sure how many of them would pay the online subscription fee.

However, what is clear is that the subscription-based, advertising-driven mode of the traditional media business is no longer effective and efficient.

Are you ready to pay online news content?

New blog for the media

This looks like a great idea. The PBS people have started up a shiny new blog dedicated solely to the creation of a new kind of media, in particular, news media. MediaShift Idea Lab exists to generate ideas regarding the best ways to pursue the most innovative and creative use for new media. Often experienced individuals in the media community are reluctant, if not sometimes downright refusing, to embrace newer kinds of content creation, so it's reassuring that the established PBS conglomerate is willing to help underscore the rise of new media.
"MediaShift Idea Lab is a group weblog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Each author won a grant in the Knight News Challenge to help fund a start up idea or to blog on a topic related to reshaping community news. The authors will use Idea Lab to explain their projects, share intelligence and interact with the new-media community online," the blog's About page reads.
That's not to say that the old guys don't have a point... the saying goes you get what you pay for, and if journalists are giving it away for free... perhaps the fee scale will push them into extinction. At least that's what the Newsosaur says.
Let the games begin.

Just for fun...

Oh yeah, the folks over at Fail Blog have been poking fun at the media for awhile now on their Probably Bad News blog. At some point, we all make mistakes, but hopefully not like these.
At least there's a blog out there to laugh at and  poke fun at other "failures in communication" and at the very least to help you know what to watch for when you get out there professionally. But, you can always blame it on deadlines. :)

Media Usage vs. Academics?

This is a bit of a pet topic of mine. I for one, happen to love all things electronic. I love to read and the internet is the perfect fix for an information junkie, and especially for people who are interested in participating in the online media community at large. On the other hand, there are new studies showing the repercussions of spending too much time in front of screens--televisions, computers, iPads and iPods--as our culture becomes increasingly passive about its consumption of electronic media. Despite my affection for being connected to the electronic umbilical cord, I also had the pleasure of growning up in the state of Idaho. Most of my free time was spent outdoors, in fields, playgrounds, parks, forests and occasionally on tree limbs. Reading Richard Louv's book made me realize that there is a generation of kids growing up in a completely new way--sans mother nature. It may be of interest to Mass Comm students that a lack of time outdoors has a direct impact on their academic performance. There are a number of studies being conducted in this particular vein, and it is something to be aware of when you elect to become a part of the media culture. We love the net, the news and the feeling of connection, but there may be a cost. One of the best articles on the subject can be found at this nifty blog post.

Happy debating...

TV watching and life span

A new research conducted in Australia found a strong connection between TV watching hours and death from cardiovascular disease, according to LA time report.

People who watched more than four hours a day showed an 80% greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 46% higher risk of all causes of death compared with those who watched fewer than two hours a day

The lead researcher of the study, Dr. David Dunstan said "What we showed was that irrespective of a person's exercise level, sitting for four or more hours watching television was linked to a significant increase in risk of death compared to watching lower amounts of TV."

Try to find how they found the causal relationship between TV hours and the increase in risk of death.

It is kind of scary to realize that TV would kill us eventually.

What do you think of this result?