ZimmComm – New Media, LLC

This PEW Project For Excellence in Journalism has just issued a report on the state of the news media as they see it. It’s a very negative outlook and seems to overlook what a lot of independent journalists are doing today that is contributing to good quality online news content that is also providing good revenue to those who are doing it. The focus seems to be on “legacy” media companies who are not doing well and just because they didn’t see the changes in technology coming or refused to jump into them and invest in them. Of course, if you combine a bad economy on top of it things just get worse for those companies.

There’s a lot of interesting facts and figures in the report. When it comes to online though, not much is said except to point to it as one of the factors contributing to the problem these companies are facing.

But the rise in the Web ’s news audience in 2008, even at legacy news sites, only added to the crisis in facing journalism.

By all appearances, the limited prospects for online advertising that supports news in 2008 became a settled issue. Even worse, little progress appeared to be made during the year in developing any new revenue models, the biggest challenge the news industry faces in its fight for survival.

New media options are now being invested in by large media companies but it may be too little too late, especially since they can’t seem to figure out a revenue model to support their huge overhead.

Perhaps you’re still wondering if your company or organization should be getting involved in new media. Have you started participating yourself (Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog, YouTube) to become personally familiar with it? It’s kind of hard to evaluate a medium you’re not familiar with.

I just saw some interesting new data on how Inc. 500 companies are making use of social media. Here’s a chart comparing their use in 2007 (green) with 2008 (blue). You can click on the image to see a bigger version of it.

Research Highlights:

The research suggests that companies that are using social media & new media technologies are growing faster than other companies.

The research was done by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. You can download the study, which I recommend.

Via Podcasting News.

The blogosphere continues to grow and amaze people in marketing. I remember when I first talked about it and some of my friends thought I was crazy to think that anyone would really read blogs, much less consider them as “tools” of communications. Times have changed.

My favorite place to keep up with what’s going on in my new media world is eMarketer. They’ve got a new report out, “The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement From Grass Roots,” which has some interesting information. Here’s a couple of excerpts:

More importantly, by 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month. That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users.

“Furthermore,” adds Mr. Verna, “the rates at which blog readers notice and click on ads suggest that they are a well-primed audience.”

Where are you placing your advertising these days? Same old, Same old or . . . . . .

I haven’t been doing much updating here lately due to the extensive amount of online event coverage projects we’re involved in. In just the last couple weeks that has included the National Agri-Marketing Association Convention, Alltech International Animal Health & Nutrition Symposium and National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Washington Watch program. During that time I was posting on multiple blogs daily and we started a new concept called Agwired Mobile and AgWired Live TV (using Ustream.tv). Additionally, we’re really incorporating Twitter into the AgWired community and you’ll find my most recent Tweets at the top of the AgWired site.

It’s just a continuing development of the community we’ve developed and our way to be in the online conversation. If you’d like to get a perspective on what that means then you should check out this post on “From the X Degree.” via Teaching Online Journalism

You might want to say that we’re just “early adopters” and that somehow this means that since not everyone in America is doing this or consuming this then perhaps it’s not something your company or news organization should be doing. Tempting if you’re afraid of the future I guess. However, it is the future of journalism and how people will and are consuming news.