The Herald Sun vs. New Media (Big Footy)
The war upon new media has hit full force in the AFL with the Herald Sun unleashing its latest attack:
AFL players have been banned from scouring fan websites, for fear the vicious player appraisals could lead to depression
Labelled “cyber bullying” and “big brother” blogging by the AFL Players’ Association, clubs have taken the drastic step of encouraging a boycott of the popular fan sites.
Unfortunately to call this a “war” is insinuating there is actually a battle going on, when rather it is simply the newspapers and traditional journalists grasping at anything they can to keep their heads above water. The issue facing the newspapers is the same that Hollywood is battling and that the music industry faced. And instead of taking advantage of new media outlets and adopting a strategy to suit it, they are asking “How can we undermine them? How do we remove their impact?”
The answer is, you can’t.
You cannot stop progress. Instead of denying the change with scathing articles they should be trying to understand the information age and adapting their business model to what is working. The worst of it is Australian Corporations have had plenty of time to prepare for the impact this change, benefiting from the hindsight of the revolution hitting America first.
If the “entrenched players” in Australian media were aware of how miserably the attempts to apply a traditional business model to new media have worked in the United States (where fan sites have began dominating sports reporting, Craigslist has all but destroyed newspaper classifieds revenue streams and YouTube is reducing TV ratings at a similar rate to Napsters
destruction of the music industry) they might have avoided the same fate.
One of the most popular is BigFooty.
On them, anonymous bloggers ritually attack players for their performances, and the criticisms sometimes carry racial and sexual overtones.
The sad fact that the Herald Sun cannot even get the fact that BigFooty is not a “blog” but rather a forum for fans correct adds testament to their ignorance. There has already been several responses from the biggest AFL fan sites, including Big Footy itself, and the AFL Footy Blog.
But even without such responses the old method of reporting on the AFL is doomed. No longer do people desire bland game reports when they can watch each game live. The days of waiting for the next day’s paper to check match stats are gone, as is scouring cluttered news sites for information on your favourite player’s injury status.
The fans want all the news at their fingertips, they want match stats instantly or as they happen, they want to be engaged with opinions that are not censored by corporate politics and they want to be able to discuss such opinions and put forward their own views.
The gates to information have been blown open and those that understand this will be left standing on top of the rubble. Those that don’t will be left by the wayside.
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Great write up dude. I think the biggest problem with the article as you put it is that he used Blog and not Forum. I guess Blog has more of buzz around it rather then Forum that already have a bad name!
Keep up the good work!
Molly