Nokia, which is obsessive about consumer research, is showing the world how to innovate from the outside-in by collecting ideas globally for free at or low cost.

At Nokia Beta Labs, the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they help make the mobile Internet more useful.

At Nokia Trends Lab, creative thinkers push the boundaries of how to use mobile technology as part of the creative process through film, music, photography and design. Thousands attend collaborative events and independent experiments around the world, all designed make Nokia devices and products more valuable to them.

At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. Over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones.

At its public Research Center, Nokia posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes. More than 1 million people downloaded the widget and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

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For the second year in a row we’ve documented a devastating lack of satisfaction with journalism in American - and an opportunity to do something about it. Here’s the formal press release of the new research, which we discussed in the opening session of this year’s We Media Miami Forum and Festival. The good news: Americans believe journalism is important. The bad news: They don’t like or trust the journalism in their communities. One thing is clear: Our forecast from four years ago of “the digital everything” has arrived - the Internet is the primary source of news for more people than any other. There’s no going back. The widespread dissatisfaction with traditional journalism could be viewed ominously, by those who produce and sell it, as a cause for alarm, a reflection of ongoing decline and a likely foreshadowing of further decline. But for the We Media culture a tremendous opportunity emerges - not only to produce better and more trusted journalism but to build better communities around it. In the We Media culture that’s an opportunity for everyone, including but by no means limited to those who think of themselves as media companies or professionals. Civic groups, healthcare companies, nonprofits, local governments and activists are starting to flex their muscles as story-tellers too. The future, like the past, will be full of stories. - Andrew Nachison

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source – 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.

These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38% of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information. Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. The survey results were announced at this week’s fourth-annual We Media Forum and Festival in Miami, hosted by the University of Miami School of Communication and organized and produced by iFOCOS, a Reston, Va.-based media think tank (www.ifocos.org). This is the second year of the survey.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges – or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present.

“Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news – so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services – and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge – and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Further Details: Zogby Methodological statement

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We’re please to announce a new service for members of the We Media Community. The iFOCOS Media Intelligence Report is a periodic review of key trends, ideas and issues in media, along with analysis of what these findings mean for the connected society.

In the new Intelligence Report we’ll consider trends in media and their implications from a variety of perspectives (enterprise, social, creative, investment, culture, technology). As usual, the analysis reflects our broad definition of We Media - the world in which everyone and every institution is media.

The report will be made available first to members of the We Media Community - so if you still haven’t joined, now there’s additional reason to make the modest investment as an individual or corporate member. You can learn more about membership here.

The report joins our iSIGHTINGS blog, which includes faster “realtime” analysis and findings. The Intelligence Report is a longer-form PDF, with more reflective synthesis of what we see and what it means - and it’s also more visual than our blog. We hope you’ll find value in both and appreciate the difference between the two.

The first edition of the Intelligence Report includes a recap of the Media Matrix Dale and I have have developed for our consulting and strategy projects, and thoughts on the Amazon Kindle, cell phone novels, the design dividend at CES, endowed social journalism - and more.

You can access and download the January 2008 issue here.

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A study by Nokia forecasts that 25 percent of the entertainment consumed by people in five years time will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle rather than created by traditional media groups. Nokia calls it “circular entertainment.”

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A new report from Harvard suggests that the Internet is “redistributing the news audience in a way that is pressuring some traditional news organizations.”

Stop the presses.

The report from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government purports to peer into the future of news in America. But “Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet” neither advances the theory of creative destruction introduced by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 40s (and later appropriated by enterprising Harvard Business School professors-consultants Richard Nolan and David Croson in 1995, then Clayton Christensen in 2001), nor illuminates the migration of news and information consumers to the Internet.

Rather, the report by JFK Government School professor Thomas E. Patterson applies a thin methodology – web traffic estimates of “unique users” – to support old chestnuts about what is happening to traditional organizations that produce print, broadcast and Internet news for what was formerly known as the mass media audience, local and national. Patterson all but apologizes in the second sentence of the report: “ … our assessments are necessarily speculative.” Veritas.

The shaky methodology and flawed premise validate conclusions that have been obvious for some time. Sure creative destruction is and has been occurring in news as well as every other sector. Almost everyone understands that. But we should be wary about conclusions based on unreliable, comparative metrics on how someone’s computer is hitting someone else’s servers on a monthly basis, then spreading that data over a time when computer and media usage have increased exponentially. As media usage changes and expands, it is reasonable to expect that “monthly users” are increasing or being redistributed throughout media.

The Harvard report assigns commercial statistics to apples-to-oranges comparisons about content and services — only some of which have to with the distribution of news and advertising — that different platforms provide in the eroding, controlling environment of mass-media distribution.

The conclusion that local web sites are losing audience to big, online competitors is largely unsupported, counter-intuitive to the Internet’s organizing principle of community. There’s more of everything, a proliferation of sources, and an endless array of choice in open markets, physical and virtual, for news and information.

Our research suggests that audiences are using multiple brands — as many as 12 to 15 day — for information, including news, and for interacting. That should change tired, self-serving notions about monopolizing or dominating markets to those who are the best at facilitating and serving markets.

At a time when all producers of online content and services crave fresh insight on the shift in media usage and behavior, Harvard has given us a hollow report that is so old school.

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Online survey finds general public, media conference attendees agree that traditional news outlets could do a better job

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 15, 2007

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, a new We Media - Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Most respondents (53%) also said the rise of free Internet-based media pose the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism and three in four (76%) said the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.

The We Media survey results were released by iFOCOS and pollster John Zogby as part of an iFOCOS conference on media innovation hosted by the School of Communication at the University of Miami, with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the national survey of adults, 72% said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. A majority of conference–goers who were polled on the subject agreed – 55% said they were dissatisfied, and 61% said they believed traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) said they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism’s future.

“We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us - the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media,” said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”

Peskin said that, until recently, many traditional news enterprises have been skeptical about We Media. “They were either fearful or dismissive of our 2003 research forecasting and documenting the change in the media ecosystem,” he said. “Now the Zogby poll provides additional evidence that “We Media” is an essential component – perhaps THE essential component – for the agenda for news and information into the future.”

“The research documents the widespread recognition that control and influence on how we know what we know is shifting to a vastly more distributed network of empowered individuals and organizations,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “This obviously will have a big impact on how media organizations evolve and conduct business, but it’s really about how we all discover, create, share and apply information, and that’s important to all industries, to entrepreneurs, to non-profits, to governments, to individuals and to society as a whole. We are all part of the ecosystem.”

We Media Miami was conducted Feb. 7-9 with major support from Knight Foundation. The conference brought together more than 250 leaders engaged in media innovation. Participants represented a range of sectors impacting media, including new and traditional media organizations, investors and analysts, information technologists, educators and researchers, as well as bloggers, citizen journalists, and news-and-information entrepreneurs.

The Zogby Interactive survey of 5,384 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.4 percentage points. The Zogby Interactive survey of 77 members of the media who attended the Miami conference carries a margin of error of +/- 11.4 percentage points. While periodic audits show the results from Zogby telephone and Internet surveys closely track each other, a companion telephone survey of this topic was not conducted.

Dissatisfaction with today’s news reportage is greater among those nationwide online respondents who identified themselves as conservative – 88% said they were unhappy with journalism, while 95% of “very conservative” respondents said the quality of journalism today is not what it should be.

Among those respondents identifying themselves as liberal, 51% said they are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism. Dissatisfaction levels were also highest among older respondents – 78% of those age 65 and older said they are dissatisfied. Most respondents (65%) also said they believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, with the highest levels of dissatisfaction with traditional journalism among those age 70 and older (74%), the very conservative (95%), and libertarians (89%).

Despite concerns about its quality, 72% of those in the national survey said journalism is important to their community. More respondents (81%) said Web sites are important as a source of news, although television ranked nearly as high (78%), followed by radio (73%). Newspapers and magazines trailed – 69% said newspapers and 38% said magazines were important. While blogs were rated as important sources of news by 30% of the online respondents, they were not considered as good a news source as the backyard fence – 39% said their friends and neighbors are an important source of information.

However, a majority of the nationwide online respondents said Internet social networking sites and blogging will play in important role in the future of journalism. But they added that trustworthiness will be important to the future of the industry – 90% said trust will be key.

Liberal and progressive respondents were more likely to say newspapers are their most trusted source than those with more conservative ideological mindsets. But radio is the most trusted source for 28% of those who describe themselves as “very conservative”, compared with just 9% of liberal respondents.

More online respondents nationwide said the Internet was their top source of news and information (40%), followed by television (32%), newspapers (12%) and radio (12%). The youngest adults in the poll, those age 18-24, were far more likely to say they mostly get news from Internet sites—58% said the Internet is their main destination for news, with television coming in second at 18%. Fewer than one in 10 in this age group said they get the majority of their news from newspapers.

For comment or reporting on We Media, contact dale AT ifocos DOT org or andrew AT ifocos DOT org.

For a detailed methodological statement on the survey, please visit:

http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1170
For more on the We Media conference, please visit:

http://ifocos.org/2006/09/01/we-media-miami-overview/

About iFOCOS

iFOCOS is an independent not-for-profit organization committed to enabling a better-informed society. It provides a variety of services, activities and training that help individuals and organizations worldwide understand and use expanding media and communications technologies to innovate as well as to create better-informed global citizens. More about at iFOCOS at: www.ifocos.org

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