The next paradigm shift: From 'article' to topical 'Wave'

We're seeing the rise of the topical page as the atomic unit of content. Journalists will no longer write stories, persay. They're going to write topics, which will have story-like elements, but won't look anything like the articles they focus on today.

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Jarvis has a cure for curmudgeons

He says ignore them.

You see, the problem with curmudgeons and complainers is that its so easy for them hijack any discussion. For not to deal with their very grave concerns is to make you look careless. That’s the rhetorical trick: “You could be wrong, it could go wrong, answer me that!” And if you don’t? “Aha!” Well, the hour is far too late and the state of the industry far, far too desperate to waste time with these sideshows. They had their time and the objections needed to be addressed in that time. But I haven’t heard fresh objections in a few years. What I want to hear instead is fresh ideas; we must have more of those.

The press becomes the press-sphere

I'm on a Buzzmachine kick today.  Jeff Jarvis does a very interesting job in The press becomes the press-sphere of showing, visually,  how we're not at the center of the news anymore, nor is our work product (stories).  Click the link to see the diagrams. 

Some of the very powerful take aways:

• The separation of content from presentation on web pages means that design, navigation, brand, and medium can change and are not necessarily controlled by an editor’s design.
• Feeds also have an impact on — and can reduce the value of — packaging and prioritization (also known as editing).
• Live reports from witnesses also reduce the opportunity to package and edit.
• The ecology of links motivates us to do what we do best and link to the rest. It fosters collaboration. It changes the essential structure of a story (background or source material can be a link away).
• Links also turn our readers into our distributors.
• Links turn our readers into editors.
• Aggregation, curation, and peer links become our new newsstand.
• Search and SEO motivate us to create repositories of expertise (topic pages) and make news stories more permanent.
• Search reduces the power of the brand.
• We see ourselves not as owners of content or distribution but as members of networks.
•  These networks can be about content, trust, interest, or advertising relationships or all of the above.

Dallasopedia?

In Überpedia lives, Jeff Jarvis talks about how the German publisher Bertelsmann is creating a 'vetted' version of some of Wikipedia.  We've been wondering whether there's a need for a Dallasopedia.  Here's a great way to get it done efficiently:  Take what's there and make it better. 

Jeff Jarvis is at an NYC media summit, where he reports on what some of the bigwigs of oldline media are saying about change.

They acknowledge that there is a "discussion happening in newsrooms across the country: minimizing commodity effort and maximizing unique reporting value."