I’ve been saying that the publishers I know in Europe are ahead of lots of people here. Guess it’s just the ones I’m lucky enough to know. Martin Stabe links to a dinosaur’s roar from Helmut Heinen, president of the German Newspaper Publishers Association. If I’m getting this right (standard translation caveat for me), he said that web 2.0 content is not journalism. He said that newspapers should use blogs, wikis, and such to reach the public, but that content produced by the public is not journalism. He called “citizen journalism” a fraudulent label. Journalism, he argued, can be done only by talented and well-trained professional journalists and he complained about the cost of making news — the old way, at least. He even criticized media for publishing mobile-phone photos and video readers send in. He fears that this turns “so-called lay reporters or reader-reporters into a collective Paparazzitum.”
Paparazzitum is a great word though. We should try and give it currency.
If you liked this, you might also enjoy:
http://netzjournalist.twoday.net/stories/3814861/
If Heinen is out of a job soon, he can come to Atlanta. Just had someone at the Atlanta Press Club’s first-ever forum on New Media say that blogs were merely “entertainment” for the people who operate them. Of course that particular (old, state, media) person had yet to read any of us local bloggers.
But we were so “entertaining,” we had to of course podcast the evening’s festivities. A very lively discussion overall! Here it be:
http://www.gapodcastnetwork.com/network-programs/mostly-itp/2007/06/07/event-atlanta-press-club-panel-discussion-new-media-the-changing-media-landscape
yup, and we sure can’t have the riff-raff sharing their points of view, for they’re not trained in thinking.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GHVbxsbECCM
Sounds like the difference between amateur and professional, ie, For the love of it or for pay.
Got that to contend with in the photography business too.
[...] 6/9/07 Posted by Steve Boriss in Citizen journalist. trackback Martin Stabe finds and Jeff Jarvis (thankfully) translates an article in which German Newspaper Publishers Association President [...]
Maybe what’s needed for a new venue with new practitioners is a new nomenclature: “Citizen Journalmakers.”
[...] zie ook deze post van Jeff [...]
[...] VÃa | BuzzMachine [...]
A new type of nomenclature, a new definition, a more specific definition…what is it that is necessary in this brave new world of participatory journalism?
What is the difference between sites like OHMyNews and CNN’s I-Report?
I am writing my MA dissertation exactly on this topic, and this is exactly the type of debate I would like to get started on my new blog: http://randomactsofjournalism.blogspot.com/
Come debate it with me!