A proposal by Steve Outing, media futurist / digital-news innovator, Boulder, Colorado

1. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Help to See Clearly When
Eyeing the Future of News
or

2. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Few media leaders have had sharp focus
when forecasting what was to come next
Newspapers printed by radio right in the home (1934) - Smithsonian/Novak Archive

3. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Many get hung up on old paradigms
when envisioning how media will evolve
George Jetson reading the newspaper on his Televiewer (1962) - Smithsonian

4. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Newspaper executives, especially,
continue to suffer from fuzzy future-vision

5. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Is it too difficult to ‘feed the news beast’ AND
forecast, plan for future opportunities, challenges?

6. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
It’s clear that the news industry
needs extra help with future forecasting
Media companies don’t need Superman…
They need futurists*

7. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
* Or if you prefer the more formal term…
STRATEGIC FORECASTING
SPECIALISTS

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THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Futurists are necessary as we enter
a NEW period of exponential disruption
If you’re in news or media, are you planning for the next wave of disruptions to arrive faster than ever?
Exponential growth in computing power means you’ll deal with them much sooner than you expect.

9. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Does the news industry
really need to hire futurists?
“Futurism is unavoidable, and any
company that gets it wrong is going to
be out of business. Business models
that work today could be completely
obsolete in the next five-to-ten years.”
—Ray Kurzweil, Google futurist and VP of engineering

10. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
What does a futurist do?
Helps envision and create a desirable future
(professional) fu·tur·ist - ˈfyo͞ oCHərist
1. someone who studies social, political, and technological
developments and trends to understand what may happen in
the future.
2. one who explores change for a
client or audience, who seeks to
describe and advance possible,
probable, or preferable future
scenarios while avoiding
undesirable ones, and who may
seek to help their client or
audience apply these insights
(manage change).
Peter
Drucker

11. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Many corporations and organizations
employ full-time futurists

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THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Where are futurists
employed by news organizations? *

13. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Where are futurists
employed by news organizations? *
* Might the news industry have avoided or lessened some of its
problems if news executives had futurists looking further ahead
to identify likely trends and disruptions, then recommend appropriate
strategies? ...
!
Perhaps Knight-Ridder, once a newspaper-chain giant, would be around today
if it hadn’t fired news futurist Roger Fidler and closed his innovation lab in 1995 -just as the commercial Internet was exploding?
Victor Hernandez has been CNN’s
full-time news futurist for the last
two years
Michael Rogers was guest futurist
2006-2008; currently none

14. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
What can futurists do to benefit
news and media organizations?
1. Identify technology and opportunities that will impact media, e.g.:
Driverless cars: opportunities for new periods of digital-media consumption by
“drivers” (entertainment; news; games; e-books; interactive education, etc.).
Robotics and AI advancements: new tools for enhancing journalists’ abilities (drone
photos, video, sensor measurements; drones or robots for keeping human journalists
out of dangerous situations while gathering information and visuals; virtual AI agents
that track a reporter’s “beat” or topic for data, trends, relieving reporter of an
important but time-consuming task, etc.).
Human enhancements: wearable technology incorporating mobile “super powers”
such as augmented vision, covert voice, photography, or video recording, and livestreaming; augmented-reality information and directions.
Social-media data and big data “analysis for dummies”: simple-to-use tools to spot
news as it happens and analyze crowd/eyewitness content; analysis tools for socialmedia content verification and identifying trends.
Source credibility measurement: systems to assign trust/credibility scores to news
sources and self-professed eyewitnesses; visual “lie detection” to alert journalists to
possible mistruths and need to dig deeper.

15. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
What can futurists do to benefit
news and media organizations?
2. Determine likely future scenarios and design positive responses, e.g.:
Evolution of social media: How might it affect your news organization?
1. Major abandonment of sharing culture and social media sites due
to negative public reaction to NSA surveillance and Internet
companies’ overreach.
2. Continued rapid growth of social media and sharing culture;
public overwhelmingly comes to accept government surveillance
and industry recording of personal data.
3. Industry technologists defeat NSA surveillance and reassure
social-media users on privacy, but curtailed industry personaldata use hinders revenue growth based on leveraging social
media.
4. The unexpected happens (e.g., cyber attacks cripple Internet,
mobile and social networks).

16. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
What can futurists do to benefit
news and media organizations?
3. Identify false futures
Remember the CueCat?
Digital Convergence Corp. pulled in $185 million from investors, including $37.5
million from newspaper and media company Belo. … IT WAS A TOTAL FAILURE.

17. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
What can futurists do to benefit
news and media organizations?
4. Trend monitoring, analysis, and projection
5. Scanning
6. Brainstorming
7. Visioning
8. Modeling
9. Historical analysis
10. Advising
news/media decision-makers on how to shape
positive futures, rather than accept and adapt to
whatever happens

18. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
The news industry can afford futurists.
Here’s the plan ...
◆ Non-profit Media Futures Project affiliated with partner
(association, think tank, academic institution...) to serve all of
news sector
◆ Seed funds from organizations and/or individuals with a stake in
revival of quality journalism and growth through innovation
◆ Media futurist(s), support staff, future-studies student interns
◆ Initial focus on news/journalism; later expansion to serve other
media sectors, adding niche futurists (music, TV, film, books...)
◆ Research, forecasts, scenarios, etc. shared freely with news
industry, journalism organizations, and journalism educators
◆ Revenue opportunities introduced: private consulting; private
speaking engagements; e-books; webinars; e-learning
modules; workshops; etc.

19. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Project instigator
Steve Outing (Boulder, Colorado)
◆ Media futurist | digital-media and news innovator
✓ Accurately forecast: digital disruption of news; crowd-sourcing and eyewitness
journalism; impact of camera-phones; social-media impact on journalism; failure of
traditional news business models in digital era; smartphone as a dominant source
FOR news and source OF news; etc.
◆ Journalist, educator, researcher, author, analyst, entrepreneur,
photographer
◆ Online-news pioneer
◆ Past: CU-Boulder's Digital News Test Kitchen, Poynter Institute,
Enthusiast Group, Editor & Publisher, San Francisco Chronicle,
San Jose Mercury News, Colorado Business Magazine
◆ http://about.me/steveouting
◆ http://linkedin.com/in/steveouting

20. STEVE OUTING
THE MEDIA FUTURES PROJECT
Want to know more?
Read detailed PDF proposal (or contact us)
CLICK IT!
Contact: Steve Outing | 303-834-7810 | steveouting@gmail.com