OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Sandra Ordonez

Tampa, Florida

Homepage: http://OurBlook.com

Contact:

to Sandra Ordonez.

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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.

Ethnic media's four-step model for the news industry's future

December 18, 2009
Disclaimer: While the following post describes the many things ethnic media are doing "right," by no means am I implying that they don't face the same problems plaguing the mainstream media. In today's market, all media organizations must find viable models to stay in business.

Recently, I was asked to gather expert interviews on the future of advertising for a University of Georgia journalism class that is taking part in the OurBlook.com University Partnership Program.

Diverse types of industry experts were interviewed who ranged from techie gurus to journalists-turned-marketers. While opinions varied on what the future holds, the majority of experts agreed that newspapers needed to focus on both niche marketing and community building techniques to be successful. This automatically reminded me that ethnic media outlets, in many ways, have been doing these things for years. Obviously, while they still face the same challenges as their mainstream cousins, it seems as though they can provide valuable guidance and wisdom on certain philosophies that mainstream newspapers will have to adapt to be successful.

Forget the Numbers. Who is your Audience?

Historically, ethnic newspapers have been less concerned with numbers than thoroughly reaching a specific audience, whether it be a Colombian community in Queens, or a growing Asian population in Central Florida. They have been successful in becoming both liaisons and voices for their targeted population, so much so that they are regularly targeted by both national and international entities seeking to interact with their specific community.

Why should mainstream models follow suit? More...

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So... what is the future of citizen journalism and social media?

July 28, 2009
In 1996 I was a communications student at American University, and had just discovered the Internet. I became an addict overnight. At that time, the public communications students were required to take many of the same classes that journalism students did. However, there was an innate understanding among my classmates that the journalism students were different. And they were. In many ways the training was more rigorous, and journalism was the only communications track that focused heavily on ethics.

Fast forward 13 years. Today, as a Web professional working for OurBlook.com, I find myself researching the "decline" or, depending on whom you talk with, the "transformation" of the same industry my professors helped me cultivate an almost obsessive respect for. The culprit? The same computer phenomenon I fell in love with in all those years ago.

In December 2008, OurBlook.com launched a Future of Journalism project. The website is a collaborative, Web 2.0 platform created for the exchange of research, information and dialogue on national and global issues. For both this and other topics, research is conducted in two steps:
1) Interviews with industry leaders are collected and published online.
2) An online book is created using the the interviews as a research base.

Given that the editor of the site is a retired journalist himself, and the founder has a long history of philanthropy in the journalism world, we expanded our research to include subtopics such as citizen journalism and social media. More...

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