Media - old and new - must embrace 'social' symbiosis

The PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest piece of annual research into media trends. It's like porn for media number crunchers and I won't even try to sum up even two per cent of the findings, but among a lot of new light upon old trends is some insight into the symbiotic relationship between 'new' and 'old media' - or more accurately social media and newspapers (something I've discussed elsewhere).

For me this relationship sits at the heart of any discussion on 'the future of the media' because for all the partisan support for social media, the elephant in the room will always be content. For many people, social media channels are seen as aggregation tools not originators of compelling content. They are a signpost, albeit with some peer-review added-value, to content.

This is supported by the PEW findings which suggest more than three-quarters of links in blog posts point visitors to content owned and generated by traditional media outlets. For Twitter - which we must remember is a mass of links - many random, many self-serving - due to the character limit imposed, the figure is still around a third which in volume terms is considerable.

Twitter

So that is a major opportunity for the media to grow online audience, in terms of quantity - possibly at the expense of quality, given what little will be known of their spikes of Twitter-driven traffic - and an example of where social media's growth owes much to the traditional media it feeds off.

Where the symbiosis must kick in regards what the traditional media must learn from social media consumption.

Consider the traditional - fairly inflexible - layout of a broadsheet newspaper from front to back: news; home affairs; international news; comment and features; business and financial news; obituaries; letters and leaders; diary and classified; sport. Or a tabloid: celebrity news; more celebrity news; human interest stories; animal stories; sport.

Michael Jackson

To varying degrees there is a depth and richness of content which will not all appeal to any one reader. Social media allows us to pick and choose from multiple sources and focus in on niche and personal interest stories - so three match reports of the same football game or five different reports of the same political debate - rather than making do with one newspaper's take on the broadbrush stuff. In the process that tells the newspapers what their most under-exploited audience sectors are interested in. Tellingly, PEW reports:

The stories and issues that draw the most attention in blogs and on Twitter differ substantially from the mainstream press. In the 47 weeks studied during 2009, blogs and the mainstream press shared the top story just 13 times. And in Twitter there was even less overlap. Among the two social media platforms [Twitter and blogs], Twitter users strayed the farthest from the mainstream press. Blogs were a bit more traditional, at least in the sources they drew on. On both platforms, though, one clear characteristic was the ability of new media to quickly trigger and concentrate passionate debate and activity around a specific issue.

We can assume some of those shared stories which topped the bill in old and new media alike included - for better or worse: Obama's inauguration, Michael Jackson's death, global economic meltdown, swine flu, the Iran election, the trial of Amanda Knox and Susan 'SuBo' Boyle. But what about the other 34 weeks of the year? This is where the media must tap into the fact audiences will increasingly read what they want, not what they're given. Media must feed this pull and realise they can no longer just push content down the pipe and maintain market share.

These social media trends must feed the long tail of a story and inform editors where they have got their shot selections wrong. The only caveat of course is the need to understand social media trends are still more indicative of what certain demographics are interested in - though happily including the demographics most appealing to advertisers - over others. Importantly though those demographic groups are only going to grow and become more important to the traditional press as this symbiosis beds in.