THE FUTURE IS NOW (opinion)

 “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” – Benjamin Franklin.

Old Benjamin had it spot on – and it’s proven throughout the history of journalism. Imagine if the journalists of old had not gone from the trusty town crier and ventured into the modern, and unknown, world of print. Then many, many years later we amde the jump to radio and later television.

When you think about it, these were big, big changes. They all faced massive challenges, and I’m sure massive failures -just look at News 24. But now they are the staples of our media landscape, and trusted information delivery systems.

We now face a new challenge – the deep dark hole of the Internet. Vast, unexplored and seemingly infinite. There are people, journalists, who would rather stay in the safe confines of their trusty, unchanging landscape but as with all development, eventually it will arrive on your doorstep. If it knocks politely or barges in with force depends on how acquainted you have become with it. Unfortunately this applies to all types of change.

People are calling this change Journalism 2.0, but it should really be up to version 10+ by now. To call it a new version is to say it’s superseding something outdated and that may not be totally true. Television did not replace radio, even though they both use sound as a medium, pod-casting hasn’t replaced live radio. So why should the Internet or citizen journalism be the replacement of them all. A major publication in this field is a book produced by J-Lab and the Knight Citizen News Network – Journalism 2.0, which can be found here.

This quote from the introduction sums up the theory around new media journalism.

“There has never been a time that offered so many powerful ways to tell stories and serve readers with information. If you love journalism, you have to love having more tools at your disposal, more interaction with your audience and the near disappearance of traditional constraints of time and space.”

The book goes on to talk about the changing market place, advertising and information access. But I think this next quote is the core of the transformation which is happening today, the ducks nuts if you will.

“This product in all its forms — journalism — is worth saving. It creates community on so many levels. And it creates marketplaces that are essential to the continuing viability of entire companies. Newspapers had a virtual monopoly on their marketplaces for decades. That’s ending now so the trick is to create new marketplaces before old ones completely disappear. Not necessarily to replace them right away, but to complement and support them.”

So if this is the destination, who are the road builders? To answer this question I’ll call on Professor Mark Briggs’ blog post here . Prof Briggs has two degrees in Journalism, a masters and a bachelor’s. He has built new media divisions over many different publications in the US. This blog post is aptly named ‘Beyond J-school’ and talks about how education institutions should be encouraging students to be diverse in their delivery of content.

“Unfortunately, evolution in journalism schools has often moved slower than in the professional industry (which can be glacial itself). It is somewhat understandable, since tenured professors who are experts in their fields suddenly found their field to be less desirable and less relevant than it was just a few years ago. As the demand for new media curriculum has risen over the past decade, many of those professors turned up their noses and discounted new methods, new technology as fads not to be taken seriously.”

According to Prof Briggs, to thrive in new media requires training and at the moment this cross media training comes from self training. The only way I can see to do this in the real world is to regularly make content in a range of mediums. To push your skills to their boundaries and learn something new, to seek out cross media publication at a range of outlets – to train yourself.

To finish up I’m going to use one more quote from Journalism 2.0 -

“Change is inevitable. Progress is optional. The future is now.”

Quotes from Journalism 2.0 used under the creative commons license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

(Photo courtesy David Stuart – DDS Media)

Clean coal or dirty laundry

To combat the climate change an new project under research in the Western Basin will pump thousands of tons of waste greenhouse gasses back underground.

The Minister for Mines and Energy, Stephen Robertson, recently released a tender for the exploration of land in the Western Basin for suitability to store of carbon dioxide underground. Greens senate candidate, Larssa Waters, said she supported research into Greenhouse gas reduction but was dubious of industry motives.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), a collation of National and International organisations, have been conducting tests with core support from major Australian and American primary, power and natural resource industries.

A spokesperson for CO2CRC, Tony Steeper, said the project intended to trap thousands of tons of Carbon Dioxide (CO²) from commercial power and gas operations and pump it deep underground. he said the the system, know as Geosequestration, had been under trial in Otway, Victoria, since April 2008 with 65,000 tons of liquefied CO² successfully held in a rock basin one and a half kilometres below the earth’s surface.

Mr Steeper said the tests had been under way in Otway since 2003 and started with extensive Geological survey to find the appropriate underground rock formations.

“You have to have a really good idea of what’s under there, whether you have to right kind of rocks” he said.

Mr Steeper explained the first step is to search for a porous rock formation deep enough to hold the liquid CO2 under pressure, and the need for a casing of dense rock around the storage basin to hold the CO² in place.

“It’s a bit like an upside down cup,” he said.

Mr Steeper said CO2 was piped in liquid form from the source and injected into the rock bed. Once the CO2 liquid is in place the research centre monitored the area for leaks with air quality testing on the surface and seismic equipment to look deep into the ground.

He said there was suitable rock basins all over the world. A project in Western Australia would use an old natural gas reservoir which was expected to take three million tons of CO² per year for the next ten years.

But Greens candidate for the senate, Larissa Waters, said although the Greens supported research into cleaner energy she was concerned this technology is largely untested.

“It’s just a huge question mark, industry professionals [and] industry experts themselves admit it’s untested, it’s untried, it’s unproven. It’s at lest fifteen years off before we know if it’s commercially viable” she said.

She was concerned it may be a case of out of sight out of mind and Australia will become a dumping ground for industry. Mrs Waters said the Greens thought it was more logical to reduce carbon emissions rather than just produce the same old amount and just bury it out of sight, out of mind.

“It props up [the coal and gas] industry and means everyone can go on doing what they have always done and continue on as normal, that’s not a sustainable way of thinking” she said.

Mrs Waters said Australia could become world leaders in renewable technology, creating jobs and making the nation wealthy but with many government institutions involved in coal based projects she was concerned public funds will be diverted from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

“Its really holding back the development of these new industries which produce far fewer emissions and actually have the opportunity to make Queensland in particular and Australia more generally world leaders in this new technology “ she said.

Mr Steeper said the CO2 storage of carbon dioxide had been used for many years to extract more gas from near depleted reservoirs. He said monitoring of the Otway site has been under way for nearly two years and claimed the liquid waste has stabilised.

But Mrs Waters said Greens experts claim it may be a lot longer than two years before we know the truth about the technology.

-By John Corlett