I Hate The Media. But It’s Dying And Web 2-Point-Oh Could Change Tourism. And the World.

I hate the media. I hate the way they write in the tabloids, the way they sensationalise death and destruction on television, the way they…

But ‘ang on: this is 2008. I’m a citizen. I’m a blogger. I’m on Facebook. I’m on the Web … and that means I (blush) AM the media!

That’s the wonder of Web 2-Point-Oh.

Two sites which I’ve recently discovered have given me a whole new outlook on life - because they’ve distilled for me (a) the power that we have as bloggers (or, as MyDigitalLife  calls us, as citizen journalists) and (b) that we can individually make a difference - something we were never able to do before (unless of course we were personally, you know, In The Media).

The first is called Publishing 2.0 . It’s a blog about how today’s technology is transforming the media that’s published by the co-founders of (ironically) Publish2  - a news aggregation platform for journalists.

And on Publishing 2.0 you’ll find two posts that I loved: ‘What Newspapers Still Don’t Understand About The Web’ and ‘What Magazines Still Don’t Understand About The Web’  - both of which left me wondering why our politicians keep rattling on about The Media And How It’s Always Distorting Everything.

Don’t they know that they’re watching the dying spasms of a dinosaur?

The Media isn’t just the Fourth Estate any longer - it’s the WHOLE blimmin Estate. It’s you and me and anyone else who wants to voice an opinion.

And the reason this is significant is brought home at my second new best site - ChangeThis.com .

I love their enthusiasm, their positive attitude and their refusal to bow to the mediocrity (media-ocrity?) that’s rotting our world.

They argue that the problem is that we’re becoming conditioned to making snap judgement about important issues based on our emotions - and that we do this because we’re using the sound-bite as our unit of measure.

“People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position.

“And yet, we’re optimists.

“People call the team at Change This optimists because we don’t believe it has to be this way. We don’t believe humans evolved to be so bad at making decisions, so poor at changing our minds, so violent in arguing our point of view. We’re well aware of how split our country and our world have become, but we don’t think the current state of affairs is built into our very nature.

“The problem lies in the media.

“In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn’t in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.

“Today, it’s very different. Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one. Radio has become a jingoistic wasteland, a series of thoughtless mantras, repeated over and over and designed to fit into a typical commute” (to find out more, download the Change This Manifesto ).

So how does all this affect us in tourism?

Well, anything that helps us grow excellence helps us grow tourism. If we want to play with the big kids, if we want to host World Cups and international conferences, if we want to build tourism products that make a difference (and all our tourism products ought to make a difference), we need to think deeply - and with informed insight - about what we’re doing.

Change This provides an incredible number of tools to guide us in our thinking. They’re called Manifestos and true to the spirit of Web 2-Point-Oh, they’re free and you’re welcome to e-mail them, print them and make them available as downloads on your blog. You’re just not free to change them in any way.

Here are three of the Manifestos I found most interesting:

o PR 2.0 - A Communicator’s Manifesto by Deirdre Breakenridge - how can we use Web 2.0 to market ourselves effectively?

o Manners Matter - The Commonsense Approach to Business Etiquette by Joel D Canfield - there’s stuff here for us in the tourism industry, where perceptions are everything: “Manners matter,” says Mr. Canfield, “not just socially; we all know manners matter socially. Manners matter in business. Good social skills, in fact, are critical to the success of any business. Let’s talk about the why and the how, but first, let’s dispel a common myth: being polite doesn’t make you a doormat.”

o The ‘New Age’ of Leadership: The Power and Practices of Maturity  by Harriet Rubin - vital reading for politicians (as if any of them ever read) as well as for those of us with an interest in the human development of newcomers to the tourism family.

Talk To Me - Martin Hatchuel - martin@thistourismweek.co.za