Getting the news on what’s happening…slow death of current mainstream news media?
Nothing new here. We’ve all seen the progression from IT “news” sites to bloggers for the latest, more up to date and investigative journalism news in our field of information security. The smart “mainstream” publications have recruited their own industry specialists to write for them - not trained journalists.
It’s interesting after studying e-business (and continuing to) and how things that were predicted many years ago are happening now. (ie; convergence of media, marketing etc etc). It all seems to follow the trend of predictions being made, people assessing those predictions, many critics….”hey, it won’t happen for a long time for these reasons or never at all……” and then, almost in the blink of an eye, it happens and people go; “WTF?!” …. okay…you’ve come this far, read on….
Inspiration here was talking to Dec today about a media event he was invited to attend with Patrick Gray from the Risky Business podcast recently where the current state of news, journalism and its future was discussed. From what I hear, Pat was well ahead of the curve by predicting where things were heading and reacting…not putting himself into the position of having to worry as much about his future as more mainstream journos are now doing:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2347211.htm
I’m not going to assess this here from a theoretical perspective…I’d need a couple of weeks in research and writing time to do it justice and even then, I’m no media expert and would never profess to be.
For me, I get almost all my Information Security news now from blog sites….the people on the ground who are seeing it or making it happen first hand. (Most of the “news” feeds in Daily Security News have been blogs as opposed to “news media” sites for a long time).
More importantly, they encompass to a degree what I would call more deep and “investigative journalism”….taking the time to hit the real issues and root causes and asking the questions. When was the last time you saw that in the mainstream news with a commitment to follow-up? (As opposed to regurgitated press releases from large IT vendors that “journalists” use to fill up space and justify their existence).
Now I know the downsides of this, like most of the stuff on the Net is; what’s real and how factual is the stuff I am reading. You have to do your own research…but have things really changed? What’s the old mainstream media saying? “Don’t let truth get in the way of a good story!”….
And thus, every morning, I still read the Daily Telegraph…the shining light of mainstream news in Sydney…and I believe everything I read! 
September 1st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
You neglect to mention that news people rip off and use what they read on the blogs and then call it journalism and take the credit.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
There’s something hinted at in DD’s post that alerted my ‘WTF?’ radar:
A “media event” occurred. The topic: The current state of the media. Attended by journos. Ah huh.
Call me cynical, but I’ll go out on a limb with a prediction: After copious rounds of back-slapping, and a few non-committal statements about areas needed for improvement, the journos at their “media event” collectively agreed that on balance, they were doing a damn fine job in the circumstances (ie, media job losses blamed on the internet).
To which I would say to those journos, “Bullshit”. If your quality reporting was worthy of reading, people would read it. And\or buy it.
BG.
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
@BG,
You’d be surprised mate, This was one of the most interesting and refreshing discussions I have attended in a long time. The guys did a great job: format, platform and content.
In fact, I would go so far as to say it is precisely the kind of thing we need in the ITSec world.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
@Dec
I take your word for it.
Maybe we could run a poll on this site, DD ? Something like: “Is the quality of ITsec media reporting in Australia a;good b;mediocre c;poor d;makes me want to projectile vomit”
And rather than read my negative rantings on the topic, in the meantime, how about someone else (aside from Dec & DD) stand up up say something really positive about the current state of ITsec journalism in Aust ?
(cue: sound of crickets)
September 4th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
zzzzzzzzz(crickets)zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
September 5th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Thanks Crickets.
@BG, to clarify my points a bit further, refer to my response here:
http://beastorbuddha.com/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=65
Polls? From memory, we did a poll that asked did we want anymore polls here and from memory, the answer was no.
I think most people decide themselves as to where they go for their infosec news so if mainstream sites aren’t hitting decent numbers, they should be looking at their product and asking why?
@JXFelon, yeah that certainly goes on I reckon but how do you track it most times once news is in the wild? For most parts, I would like to hope if we’ve had anything interesting here in Beast or Buddha, we’ve been referenced. Happens every so often.
DD
September 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Credit where its due…
We appear to be in an era where media ’sponsorship’ by vendors directly to journos (not to be confused with advertising revenue) has become begrudgingly accepted by our industry. Sponsorships\direct incentives cast an insidious black cloud over our media, bringing into question the quality and integrity of the reporting.
And there’s the problem.
People aren’t stupid. Should potential readers have to bother themselves with the question of potential bias - if the journo writing the article is sponsored by the same company being ‘reported’ on ? Alternatively, should readers have to be bothered asking themselves a similar question if the ’sponsored’ journo is reporting on a direct competitor to the company they’re sponsored by ?
Sure, for accountability, journos can disclose sponsorships or vendor incentives ’till the cows come home. Does this disclosure therefore nullify or negate the potential for biased reporting ? One would be an even bigger galoot than I to presume it did.
Amongst the stinking quagmire of journalist’s vendor sponsorships that is the world of ITsec media, I’d like to single out a journo for high praise, however.
Liam Tung of http://www.zdnet.com.au/ gets my thumbs up vote for best ITsec reporter in Australia for the consistently high standard of his articles.
Disclosure: I have not received any reward from Liam or zdnet.
BG.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:15 am
@BG I just think that you think that Liam is hot! And to be fair, he probably is the hottest ITSec reporter in all of Australia! Call a spade a spade BG and just say, you would love to have some man time with him!
September 6th, 2008 at 7:54 am
@Manlove, LOL….Now you’ve done it. BG….he’s a man’s man! Gees, now that could be taken the wrong way I suppose.