Watches News orgs’ goal for 2010: Imagine tomorrow’s media world today

News orgs’ goal for 2010 Imagine tomorrow’s media world today

The legacy press — or the traditional media, or whatever we’re calling newspapers these days — has one main challenge for 2010, and it’s not finding a new business model. It has to do with vision. It has to do with being able to imagine a world that does not yet exist.

While the news media’s woes come from lagging ad rates and content that’s scooped up by aggregrators, those are symptoms of the main problem: an inability to imagine what media consumption will look like in one, five, 10 years.

It’s a problem that’s not new or unique to the news business. Two examples illustrate my point.

Personal computers

In the early ’60s, IBM, the king of computers at the time, couldn’t imagine a need for personal computers, according to Robert X. Cringley’s 1992 book, “Accidental Empires.” (The famous quote from IBM chief Thomas Watson — “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” — appears to be apocryphal, though.) In those days, computers were mainframes that filled a room. Executive didn’t type; they had secretaries for that. Watch an episode of “Mad Men,” and you’ll get the idea.

Cringley writes in his book that top IBM executives were briefed on a plan for video-display terminals in those days, but they didn’t get it. “These were intelligent men, but they had a firmly fixed concept of what computer was supposed to be, and it didn’t include video-display terminals,” he wrote. “To invent a particular type of computer, you have to want to use it, and the leaders of America’s computer companies did not want a computer on their desks.”

Imagine that: a computer company that could not foresee that people might want to harness the power of a mainframe computer, plunk it on their desk or lap, and use it all by themeselves. Today it seems preposterous; my laptop gets turned on as early each morning as my coffee maker.

IBM and others couldn’t imagine a world that didn’t exist then. Of course, others did — including later bosses at IBM — and the personal computer was born. But the inability to imagine delayed the process and changed the computer industry forever. Ask you typical 20-something who rules the computer business, and IBM won’t be on their list.

Microwaves

The first commercial microwave hit the market in 1947, according to Microtech’s history of the microwave. But it wasn’t until the 1970s when they caught on in the home. I remember when my family got our first: We all watched as my mom boiled her first cup of water for tea in this mammoth machine. “I can’t imagine what I’ll do with this,” I remember my mother saying, noting that making tea water in a stovetop kettle seemed easier.

Then think about today. My microwave died on Christmas Day, when not a store was open to replace it. Our family barely made it to Saturday, when I rushed to Target to buy a new one. What we couldn’t imagine a use for 30 years ago, we can’t live without today.

What this means for the news business

My point is news organizations need to imagine how people will consume news in the future — even though it might not make sense to them today. Newspapers owners may want ink on their fingers, and a paper they can feel, but many of their customers don’t now — or won’t in five years. And they may think a newspaper web site should look like a newspaper, but it shouldn’t. (It’s normal to build something new based on something old. That happened in the computer world, too, with the first microcomputers modeled on a mainframe.)

The challenge for the news biz is to look ahead and imagine how people may want their news and information. It’s about format (online, by phone, through social media) and content (aggregated, local, tailored to their needs.) For local news operations, this mean “organizing a community’s information so the community can organize itself,” as Jeff Jarvis puts it.

For all media organizations, it means adding more value to what they offer readers, according to Jay Rosen. What it doesn’t mean is forsaking the journalistic mission in search of the “almighty hit,” as Lehigh University journalism professor Jeremy Littau puts it.
Coppied by http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/01/news-orgs-goal-for-2010-imagine-tomorrows-media-world-today/

All the day's breaking news from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa

Watches All the day's breaking news from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
breaking news from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
Paul, the octopus who became a sensation by correctly predicting the outcome of all seven of Germany's games plus the Spain-Netherlands final - is going to retire.

He will "go into retirement and do what he likes to do best: play with his handlers and delight children who come visit to him," according to Tanja Munzig, a spokeswoman for the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen.

Paul took one last curtain call when aquarium employees presented the octopus with a golden cup - similar to the official World Cup trophy.

2215: Spain goalkeeper wins Golden Glove award

The Spain keeper and captain Iker Casillas conceded just two goals in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Under pressure after La Roja opened their campaign with a shock 1-0 defeat to Switzerland, Casillas answered his critics with a string of superb displays that proved crucial to Spain’s progress to the Final.

In the final it was Casillas ability with the high ball and quick reactions with his feet that denied a number of Dutch chances that could have lost Spain the World Cup.

2040: Dutch return to canal celebration

The Dutch football team, who were beaten 1-0 by Spain in the World Cup final, will return to a heroes welcome and a parade along the canals of Amsterdam, city officials confirmed.

"The players will parade in a boat which will navigate the canals of Amsterdam. The tour will last between two and two and a half hours," Guus Schoker, spokesman for the city of Amsterdam, told AFP on Monday.

"The fans will gather along the banks of the canals and can see the players."

The Oranje will then make their way to a specially-erected podium at the Museumplein in the city centre where 180,000 fans gathered on Sunday night to watch the final on a giant screen.
Coppied by http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/world-cup-2010/all-the-days-breaking-news-from-the-2010-fifa-world-cup-in-south-africa/story-fn50jked-1225921323471?from=public_rss

Turkeys school Muslim world turns to Turkish model of education

We are know the Muslim world turns to Turkish model of education
Photo caption: Pakistani religious students read the Quran at an Islamic seminary in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Children crowd into a large, open room an hour drive from Peshawar, Pakistan, their young bodies packed together despite the lingering heat. A small boy with a serious face sits in the back, a copy of the Quran on the cement floor beside him.
Madrasas like this have come to dominate much of rural education in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the state has forgotten its children and the mullahs have room to step in.
But with the Taliban insurgency going strong and a rising Islamic militancy in Pakistan, experts worry that such schools — which often push a more fundamentalist brand of Islam than is traditional in these countries — have become fertile recruiting grounds for the Taliban.
With their own public education systems in shambles, however, Afghanistan and Pakistan are beginning to look to Turkey’s brand of Islamic education as a potential antidote to madrasas where there is often little offered beyond rote memorization of the Quran.

“Through education you are, in one form or another, controlling the political socialization of the upcoming generation,” said Iren Ozgur, a Turkish-American academic at New York University who has studied Turkey’s imam-hatip system.
The imam-hatip syllabus devotes just 40 percent of study to religious topics, including Arabic and Islamic law. Secular topics like math, science and literature fill the rest of the time.
Can children get a balanced education at Islamic schools like the ones in Turkey? Join the conversation in the comments below.
Earlier this year, education ministers from Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan met in Ankara to sign a protocol on cooperation in education.
“I visited a few imam-hatip schools in Ankara and saw that they give a balanced education there,” said Farooq Wardak, the minister of education in Afghanistan. “Learning from their experiences, we will be able to achieve a balance in our own Islamic education system.”
According to U.N. figures only 12.6 percent of women over the age of 15 can read and write in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, only 63 percent of children finish primary school education and less than 3 percent were enrolled in higher education as of 2008.
They are hardly the only nations eyeing Turkey’s imam-hatip system. The schools already exist in Bulgaria, and Russia wasn’t far behind in sending a delegation south to examine the imam-hatip model as a potential way to manage their own growing Muslim population.
Despite the attention, however, there is hardly a consensus on whether Turkey’s system is the right way to bring Muslim youth back from the madrasas — and nowhere is the system more controversial than in Turkey itself.
A predominantly Muslim country, Turkey was established on a rigid platform of secularism. The schools were founded in the 1920s to educate Muslim preachers and prayer-leaders. But with more than 500 imam-hatip schools in Turkey educating more than 100,000 students they have since become incubators for Turkey’s rising Muslim elite. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended an imam-hatip school himself, as did one-third of his party’s MPs.
Having religious education integrated into the state system has long been a tough pill to swallow for Turkish secularists. After senior generals pushed out the country’s first Islamist-led government in 1997, the military enforcers of secularism targeted the imam-hatip system and attendance plummeted. Changes to the university admission system soon after meant that students studying at imam-hatip schools had points deducted from their university entrance exams, effectively banning them from Turkey’s most prestigious universities.
Under the governing Justice and Development Party, whose pro-Islamic background is infamous, the decision was passed last summer to end these systemic inequalities — but not without protest.
Coppied by http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/education/100809/turkey-islamic-schools-education

World Cup 2010 begins in South Africa

Ceremony kicks-off 2010 World Cup
Watches this enjoy World Cup 2010 begins in South Africa
The 2010 World Cup in South Africa got under way with a spectacular and vibrant opening ceremony at the 94,000-capacity Soccer City in Johannesburg.
The ceremony was followed by the first game of the tournament between the hosts and Mexico, which ended 1-1.
Africa is staging the World Cup for the first time, with 32 nations competing in 64 games until the final on 11 July.
Nelson Mandela was due to attend the opening ceremony but withdrew following the death of his great-granddaughter.
Zenani Mandela, 13, died in a car crash when travelling home from the pre-World Cup concert in Johannesburg on Thursday.

PAUL FLETCHER'S BLOG
There is a feeling that this World Cup can have a profound impact on how the continent of Africa is perceived by the millions watching from abroad
She was one of the 91-year-old anti-apartheid icon's nine great-grandchildren.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation released a statement saying it would be "inappropriate" for Mandela, a former South African president, to be at the opening ceremony.
"We are sure that South Africans and people all over the world will stand in solidarity with Mr Mandela and his family in the aftermath of this tragedy," added the statement.
"We continue to believe that the World Cup is a momentous and historic occasion for South Africa and the continent and we are certain it will be a huge success."
The 40-minute ceremony began with a five-plane military flypast over the stadium, which resembles a huge African cooking pot.
A group of drummers and dancers performed a 'Welcome to Africa' song that included an introduction to all 10 tournament's venues.
The next sequence saw a gigantic beetle show off its football skills with the Jabulani - the official football of the finals - before large pieces of cloth were used to show a map of the continent.
Musicians and artists from the other African finalists - Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria - also had their chance to perform in a joint sequence.

Sixteen people - including two police officers - were injured at a stampede ahead of a World Cup warm-up match on Sunday between Nigeria and North Korea outside Makhulong Stadium in the township of Tembisa near Johannesburg.
And journalists from China, Spain and Portugal were targeted in two separate armed robberies in and around Johannesburg on Monday and Wednesday.
However, Fifa president Sepp Blatter insists the World Cup will be a success.
"Everywhere, one can feel, I hope, that this World Cup is very special, the first on African soil," he said. "We find ourselves in a position of indescribable anticipation.
"More importantly, this competition will prove that South Africa, and the African continent in general, is capable of organising an event of this magnitude."
Some of the world's best players will be on display in South Africa, among them Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
But some big names will be missing because of injury, such as England duo Rio Ferdinand and David Beckham, Germany skipper Michael Ballack and Ghana midfielder Michael Essien.
Didier Drogba - an icon in African sport - fractured his elbow in a recent friendly against Japan, but is hopeful of playing a part in the Ivory Coast's campaign.
coppied by http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8731389.stm