Hi: I'm Doreen Marchionni (Ph.D. '09, Missouri School of Journalism). I'll be your intergalactic pilot on this journey through my dissertation. Send whiskey, please.
Partially in response to essdogg’s questions: The citation for the previously mentioned study: Newhagen, J. & Nass, C. (1988). Differential criteria for evaluating credibility of newspapers and TV news. Journalism Quarterly, 65, 567-588. It’s considered seminal in the field of media credibility research.
In the years leading up to it, scholars were seriously flummoxed by various studies, mostly surveys and experiments, that showed people rated TV news as more credible, both in local and national contexts — with or without Dan Rather. Newhagen and Nass cracked the puzzle by figuring out news consumers simply were using different criteria to evaluate crediblity in TV and the press.
Here’s the thing about video on newspaper sites: The goal isn’t to replicate TV news but to show there are real live people behind the institution. Today’s Internet personalities do this instinctively. Take Merlin Mann: Besides 43 folders, the Hipster PDA and Inbox Zero we chuckle at his tweets, watch him as That Phone Guy and laugh with him on You Look Nice Today. In Tumblr culture, users will post pictures of themselves for Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Wednesday, or GPOYW. It’s a fun meme that gives blog authors a pretense-free way to post vanity pictures of themselves. Meanwhile, the Birdhouse launch video, featuring Adam Lisagor, Cameron Hunt, Scott Simpson and Merlin Mann, helped personalize the company and the application.
True, news media organizations have a long way to go in integrating these queues into their Web sites to the degree of sophistication that their readers do on their personal site, but the TimesCast is a start. And it’s exactly the right time to take risks. BTW, only the first 30 seconds or so were inside the news huddle. The rest of the TimesCast consisted of interviews conducted in the newsroom. For what it’s worth, I also think this can aid transparency by showing a bit more about how the mainstream media sausage gets made.
