Are bloggers journalists? Until recently, it was a fairly pointless question debated by those trying to justify an aspiration or maintain their position as part of an elite.
But as the traditional media looks to UGC to maintain its own viability, the credentials of bloggers as citizen journalists has been brought sharply into focus.
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‘That’s how many press releases arrive at a daily newspaper on an average day …’ I used to announce as I tipped a small skipful of paper on the table.
People from community organisations who came on my media-made-simple courses were always amazed that a journalist could create prioritised order from such a mountain of chaos so quickly.
Now I know how they felt. I’ve got feeds, blogs, links, tags, plugins, widgets and bookmarks coming out of my ears. And that was before the Twittervasion. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s three months since the announcement that the BBC was to scrap its ambitious plans for local video, after something of a scuffle between the corporation and regional press.
You could hardly say the contest was decided by a knockout. By the time BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons effectively pulled the plug on the £68million proposals, saying the corporation would be focusing on “improving the quality of existing services”, newspaper heavyweights were already elsewhere battling to survive the biggest advertising downturn in a generation.
Spectators left at the ringside, those baffled, licence-paying punters (who hadn’t exactly taken to the streets to demand more local video news in the first place) were left scratching their heads, wondering why they’d been invited to the non-event of the year.
If you ignore the rhetoric, the decision not to go ahead was sound. But if the protagonists had stayed in the ring a little longer, they might just have salvaged something of benefit for local communities.
