Media is a Plural - Rory O'Connor's Blog � We Against Them: Fear and Trust in the Media

Media is a Plural - Rory O'Connor's Blog � We Against Them: Fear and Trust in the Media: "Sambrook, on the other hand, began by declaring “We don’t own the news anymore,” and went on to detail what he pointedly described as “bigger than a movement – not a toe in the water, not product development – but a fundamental realignment.” To Sambrook, the news has become “democratized,” and as a result, “It’s become a whole new ball game” for Big Media concerns such as the Beeb. His conclusion: “We must do something completely different.”

Sambrook rightly described the measure of any news organization as “the quality and depth of its relationship with the public.” Digital technology is now fundamentally changing that relationship. Sambrook and other BBC executives believe they “must embrace that change.” Social (or citizen) media, says Sambrook, “used to exist on the margins, but is very quickly becoming central. We’re at the tipping point right now.”

As a result, the entire BBC is now preparing for that embrace, moving from seeing its role as being “a one-way broadcaster to a moderator to a facilitator,” says Sambrook. The ways in which the BBC will seek to add value in the future will also change. Sambrook outlined three keys to the BBC’s emergent value proposition:

1) Connecting audiences
2) Verification of news
3) Analysis, explanation and context addition.

The BBC, according to Sambrook, is now “in the middle of reorganizing and reprioritizing itself for a fully-digital, on-demand environment. On-demand is our future.”

Such a total transformation, says Sambrook, requires “a huge cultural shift” on the part of Big Media, a shift to “thinking about content in a 360 degree manner.” Executives like him must now start thinking about “how to take content forward and allow the public to engage with it, alter it, and so on.”"