Citizens bite: Part 2

“Everyone, from journalists to the people we cover to our sources and the former audience, must change their ways. The alternative is just more of the same” – Dan Gillmor (We the Media).

Speaking of changing ways, I must begin with a correction. I gave the impression that other Brisbane media did not attend the Citizen Byte new media symposium in Brisbane yesterday. That wasn’t true. Graham Young (OnLine Opinion, Ambit Gambit, What the People Want) was an invited speaker and there was also Wotnews.com.au. I have since found out that other journalists and academics would have attended with more notice. The proceedings were also filmed.

Citizen Byte is a community research project to “examine what the implications of the new media environment are on politics and the political sphere both in Australia and in Malaysia.” New media is having a bigger impact in Malaysia than in Australia. Yesterday I discussed keynote speaker Steven Gan. The editor of Malaysiakini is the “new media” go-to person for the White House and the New York Times and he has transformed a small online venture into Malaysia’s most popular news site. Now I discuss other Malaysian wisdom on offer at the symposium. Tomorrow I will conclude with some great observations by the conference’s only Australian speaker, Graham Young.

Not the least wisdom came from a member of Malaysia’s media elite: Datuk Azman Ujang. Datuk Azman is chair of the Malaysian Press Institute and editorial adviser at national news agency Bernama and broadcasting arm Bernama TV. He took up the latter two jobs having retired as overall GM of Bernama. Datuk Azman is an experienced powerful insider who can call a spade a spade in the corridors of power. He said the government admonishes him for being “too honest” but does not dare censure him further. Yet even he was disturbed by the last election result which was a wake-up call for the media as well the government. Azman said entrenched government support within the media has resulted in biased news for 50 years. The arrival of new media suddenly made credibility a marketplace issue for urban voters. Malaysiakini took up the challenge and inspired other news portals. Opposition politicians began blogging in numbers to enhance their appeal with younger audiences and crash through their lack of coverage in the MSM. They also used the world’s highest mobile penetration to spread viral political messages.

Most villages don’t have the Internet or mobile phones and the government won the election overall 60:40. Poorer states, particularly East Malaysia voted for BN. Entrenched corruption in Sabah and Sarawak has survived for half a century which KL turns a blind eye to. The government uses regulation of the broadcast spectrum and annual licensing of newspapers to keep the media in check. Azman said “unwritten laws” depended on the circumstances, mood and attitude of the government at a particular time.

Mohd. Zulkifli was the next to speak. Zulkifli is a content manager at Media Prima Berhad, Malaysia’s largest media company with four free-to-air TV channels. Zulkifli is bringing the power of new media to bear on many of those assets. He said audiences had to register to the websites but the content was free and 838,000 Malaysians have signed up.

Zulkifli says their biggest differentiator is video content but they are also providing Tweetdecks, SMS alerts (with video alerts starting next month), streaming content on mobiles, and interacting with television shows in innovative ways that would please fan theorists like Henry Jenkins.

Their websites are full of blogs and online discussions with network stars and there are discussion rooms where audiences have their say and affect the plots of soap operas. There is also an “Indie showcase” channel that deliberately attempts to “push the boundaries of censorship”. In 2007 Berhad released Malaysia’s first made-for-web drama. “Kerana Karina” which tells the story of overnight pop star Karina in 20 four-minute episodes. Though he didn’t mention it, Zulkifli also wrote the lyrics to the KK theme song.

What he did mention was Berhad’s investment in new media (including 60 staff) is paying off. The most popular site TV3.com gets 41 million hits each month. His job is to keep the revenue high otherwise, he said, he “wouldn’t be here next year”. Zulkifli says that social media is the big challenge of the next couple of years. Somehow, I don’t expect him to fail this challenge – Mohd. Zulkifli is definitely not “more of the same”.