I just got an email from the fine folks at SlideShare saying that the YulNews presentation was selected as SlideCast of the day. This is great news and I invite you to check it out here!

Here is an interesting article talking about newspaper advertisement. There is definitively a big decline in revenues and the decline is accelerating. I’m curious but I bet online advertising is going up or are advertisers simply leaving the news sector?

Well it took very long but the New York Times decided to go “free”. Good move? Bad move? We’ll see but their numbers are impressive. They jumped from 2.9 million visitors to 17.5 million visitors.

Not bad and let’s hope their advertising model will work.

There is a common misconception about journalists and crowdsourcing. Most people believe that it’s either black or white and that there’s no gray zone. And I usually quickly reply that of course there is a gray zone. We’re all in this gray zone if you wish. The main difference between a normal human being and a journalist is simply the salary. Of course this is not entirely true but you get the point. A journalist is just a normal human being who gets paid to report news. That’s his job and he’s paid for it. We can’t say that all human beings are automatically journalists but a lot of them have some interest in this field. A lot of people have journalistic talent but are not journalists. That’s probably why so many people blog.

My own definition of a journalist is someone who brings something forward in order to expose it (for good or evil). So are bloggers journalists? Yes. Are journalists bloggers? Not always!

Journalists need to move their profession to another level. There is a very famous book (Journalism 2.0) by Mark Briggs and I invite every one to read it. By the way, the book was released under the Creative commons license so it’s free. Journalists can’t drop everything and “move online” as there’s nowhere to go now but this is about to change.

I believe that “the journalist job” is going to radically change within a few years. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it will disappear but I fear the number of journalists will decrease over the next decade. Why? First of all, information wants to be free. I haven’t paid in years for a newspaper and I’m not the only one. My parents are still reading newspapers but I believe it will be harder and harder to sell those to the upcoming “always connected” generation. The concept of news papers is also dying in this lighting speed age. Why buy something that was printed “hours” ago when you can get up to the minute RSS feeds on your iPhone? See where this is going? Sure, we’ll still need journalists to write articles but who’s going to pay them? It’s sad to say but I doubt the current model will last for very long. It’s broken and we need to fix it.

There is a very interesting article on Fagstein and I invite you to read it. The problem is if quality might take a drop if citizens take over the journalist’s duty and start reporting on their own. I guess so in the very short term and let me explain. This is exactly what happened on Youtube when it started. People uploaded a lot of questionable videos. And I understand them. This is brand new technology and you want to be the first one to upload a karaoke video.

However, people “grew up” and now we’re seeing more high quality content. There are “producers” (who are still amateurs) but deliver very high quality material. Professionals or semi-pros use Youtube to show off their work too. So would “social news” suffer the same fate? I truly believe so. People will start by writing silly things just to show off but in the long run, these people will quit writing and go back to reading. It’s also exactly the same thing with blogging. There are gazillions of blogs out there. Are they all good? Of course not but who cares? People LOVE to talk and I believe that high quality material will come out of those dedicated “citizen journalists”. And while it might not always be up to par with pros, I believe we’ll be surprised by what they will produce. Why? Because people care about what affects them. If there’s an issue that’s not taken care by your mayor, maybe you won’t go out and interview him but you might write a nice story, a story that comes from your heart/guts. And those are the best stories. Stories from devoted annoyed or pissed off citizens.

Will citizens do good journalists? I bet you they will!

Steve from fagstein.com (excellent blog) talks about media firms cutting journalists like there’s no tomorrow. I think this is very normal of any big company: you want to do more with less and unfortunately, quality often goes with it. It’s a fact of life. If you want high quality work, you need to invest a lot of time. You can’t really write anything decent without doing some research and investigation first unless you are very close to the community affected.

What do we get nowadays? We all know about the terrible accident which killed Bianca, a little 3 years old girl, from Ile Perrot. Blame it on the journalist or the neighbours but printed comments like “the mother paid her rent on time” is NOT journalism. Where is the relation between the accident and paying rent on time?

How about talking to other kids, other parents, school principal and teachers where this happened? Don’t limit yourself to the first comment you receive. Go deeper. What will the city do about this? There are hundreds of things to do rather than print mumbling about paying rent on time.

Without pointing the blame directly at them, let’s not forget that journalist don’t have much time. They are part of a bigger machine and that machine is not stopping for anyone. They have to cover a lot of stories so can we expect dedication from them? Well maybe not. Long term dedication? I highly doubt. Can we expect dedication from the community? You betcha! Just look at everyone helping Cedrika’s parent. People in the community care. They posted her picture everywhere. People outside of the community rarely care, if at all.

“Luckily” for Bianca, she was right next to Montreal. Had she been from a very remote area would everyone in Québec still know about this tragedy now? I’m not so sure about this and this is very saddening as a human tragedy remains a human tragedy regardless of where you live. Why does it to be that unless things happen in a large city, they are not worth mentioning?

So what’s the solution to this problem? Journalists come and go just like a “hit and run” accident. Usually, something bigger will come up the nest day and coverage will fade away very quickly. Is this what we want? I guess not. We need a way to keep current issues alive and gather more interest. There has to be a way to spread the word. I’m working on this but I need your help. Let me know how we can make news better. What could be better? What is wrong these days?

I’m listening, email me (info@yulnews.com) or comment below. Thanks for listening.

We did a quick presentation about the “The current state of social news”. We talked about reasons behind the project and some upcoming features.

Here is the presentation for those who couldn’t see it:

| View | Upload your own

Basically, we believe that everyone who owns a blog and participates in social media sites is a journalist. Per Wikipedia, being a journalist means:

“The gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people”

I bet this sounds just like what you’re doing, right? Today, journalists are “one man shows” not part of large companies anymore. At least, there is a trend towards this model. Although they still exist, I believe large media firms will be less influencal in the future and I believe journalists will freelance and use their popularity on their advantage. A new era of journalists will then evolve.

So what’s “Social news” ?

Social news is you being a journalist. Social news is written by people who care. Social news is all of you who are tired of the old broken system.

So, what’s “broken” ?

Well, first of all, small towns. They’re nowhere to be seen in regular newspapers unless some major crime happens or the last factory closes. Then editors. They tell you want to read. User participation. I guess we can skip that one right off the bat as there is none. No one seems to care about local communities yet most large city are very multicultural. Then how come there’s no ethnic section in most newspapers? Finally, do big media really care? Are journalists paid to report on what they really care about or what the editor wants?

What about blogs?

Well blogs are great to express a one way opinion. People react by commenting on what you just said. However, I think blogs are not meant to spread news. So how about better blogs? Well, it’s getting there but not quite.

So what am I doing?

YulNews is all about fixing this. YulNews is about user submitted headlines, user controlled, anytime, anywhere and any city! But with YulNews, “social news” is not just a product, it’s the basis on which we want to build YOUR community.

So… how can you help?

Well I’d like to hear from you. Tell us what you think about this project and if you want to participate, have ideas, features and so on then please let us know as well.

- The YulNews team

This blog will attempt to keep the community updated with any progress done on our side. We’ll also discuss about “The current state of social news”.

More to come!

- The YulNews team