SELF ASSESSMENT PROGRESS REPORT

Our research topic, which addresses the challenges facing heritage media in an evolving media landscape and the trend for 'new' media to engage their target audience by giving their content away for free in the hope to attract a greater following, demands thorough research of both heritage media companies as well as new media business models. When our group began thinking about free media, we found the model of Vice to be the most pertinent to our own theories and ideas about the shifting media world. The recent documentary 'Page One: Inside The New York Times' which explores the way The New York Times - a heritage media company steeped in tradition -  is adopting to a shifting demographic and new financial demands and restraints. The documentary features Vice editor in chief butting heads with senior NYT journalist David Carr in a very entertaining example of two differing ideologies interjecting and interrupting each other. This is what lead us to want to explore our chosen theme.

For the purpose of our research, our group has decided to each contribute equally the amount of research that needs to be done. Finding industry contacts, relevant articles, journals, books etc, as well as any online content that can be used to help further our knowledge of the topic. We have decided to explore our theme through the use of an academic style documentary, of which I will be the producer. We believe that by creating a documentary instead of writing a report of over 15,000 words, we are responding to our theme in a way that mirrors the very debate occurring within the theme itself. We want to engage our audience, and we feel that a documentary will achieve this. My role as a producer will be to arrange interviews with key industry contacts, handle legalities, organise locations, collaborate with each member of the group to ensure any problems are resolved and generally oversee the documentary is headed in the right direction, and on time. 

So far, the group has made significant progress in terms of research. Most of this research has revolved around web based findings of numerous articles written on our chosen topic. By casting our eye over websites simplyzesty.com, paidcontent.org, and documentarystream.com, and others, we have gathered a collection of information about our chosen topic. We have uncovered the economics of digital content, and how the internet is essentially responsible for the digital revolution of heritage media companies. The consumer is targeted more as an individual, and demographics are non-linear and fluid. We have employed strategies to get in touch with industry contact through our own personal connections with various professionals and friends. We will continue to develop this. We hope to achieve interviews with four people of varied age and profession who all relate to our topic. Because of my connections at Vice Australia, we will be able to interview a current employee. We hope to also interview an academic (possible from RMIT), am entrepreneur friend who is struggling to start his own publication, and a fourth, as yet undetermined figure. As producer of our documentary, I will arrange interviews, however we are all responsible for creating contacts and finding media theorists to discuss our topic. 

The biggest problem I have encountered has been finding a suitable documentary to help guide us. As I have never produced an 'academic' style documentary, a big challenge I face is deciding how to retain its credibility as an academic piece of work in a film format. Ongoing research is being done to resolve this. We have been looking at Errol Morris documentaries for inspiration, as well as looking at information heavy docos such as 'An Inconvenient Truth' for ideas on how to maintain audience interest when the content is data dense.
I believe our project will connect with other projects in the course as well as other projects outside of Media Industries. Due to its nature of being an exploration of the shifting paradigm of media, how old media and new media are colliding, and the economics of free media, the scope for possible intersections with other projects is quite wide. The corresponding project in our class, which is a study on social media and the changing face of the 'news', has direct relation to our project because we are both uncovering changes in the media landscape.
Our project has the potential to unearth statistics and present them in an interesting way, offer opinions from four people of varying backgrounds, and make some sense of the evolving media landscape we are looking into.