In trying to piece together what happened at last week's Online News Association conference in San Francisco, I took to creating a tag cloud from the event's tweets using Wordle and I am pleasantly surprised at the results.
Sprinkled in the cloud above are words like "good time," "getting better," and (maybe the most encouraging) "hope." One attendee described the atmosphere to me as "almost 100 percent curmudgeon-free."
Much like the recession, which everybody is suddenly declaring over, the ONA conference seems the latest point on the media timeline that suggests that the industry is ready to be optimistic again.
Whether that optimism is well-founded is another story, but the social media chatter was all about the positive focus.
Suddenly there are success stories like Leo Laporte's TWiT podcasting network ($1.5 million in revenue); awards were given out to established hypelocal sites like Gotham Gazette; and now online journalism has a swagger:
It's wonderful to see a "can do" attitude, but now the real test: Will the optimism translate into more profitable online news sites? Will we see more innovative ways to deliver content (augmented reality, anyone)?
I sure don't have the answers, but for the first time in awhile, I'm optimistic.
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Comments
It was a real breath of fresh air
After spending so much time working with media people whose emotional outlook pretty much spans the range from "Clinically Depressed" to "Suicidal," yeah, the ONA conference was a refreshing change. The "swagger" cited above by Mathilde was perhaps a function of the lack of "woe is me" whining in the various rooms.
The best example of that I found was in talking to the students there. They see the changes in Big Media as a fabulous opportunity. We need to nurture that as much as possible - since it's quite likely we Old Media types will wind up working at whatever shops they innovate in the next couple of years...