I went to a really interesting debate last night in Westminster all about the Future of News. The panel was made up of:-
Andrew Neil – Publisher and Broadcaster
Turi Munthe – Founder of Demotix a citizen-journalism website and photo agency
AA Gill – Journalist and author
Claire Enders – Owner of one of the leading independent media research companies in the UK
Matthew Parris – Times and Spectator columnist
Jacob Weisberg – Chairman and editor of The Slate Groupe, a new division of The Washington Post Co.
David Elstein – Chariman of OpenDemocracy.net
and was chaired by Simon Jenkins who is a columnist on The Guardian and The Evening Standard.
AA Gill seemed to be the only obvious dinosaur, suggesting that journalists were a major cut above “citizen-jounalists” and bloggers. He was passionately anti blogging it seemed, suggesting that “if it’s not paid for by you then it has to be paid for by somebody else”….intimating that most blogs are sponsored. He pointed out that theatre reviews were popular online but that most were written by theatre producers. Well, mine aren’t and anyway, you get a lot of sponsored articles in newspapers too. He referred to Twitter and tweeting on more than one occasion as “Twinkles”. He also suggested that comments generally left on blogs were “knuckle scrapingly awful” and nothing like the letters you get in newpapers. Well. You can’t compare the two frankly. The point is that people are reacting to news in a different way. One is an immediate response and an interaction between the writer and the reader and the other is a well thought out response to something that by the time it arrives may have been forgotten. They both have their place. I was disappointed to find that he came across as a pompous arse.
It was for the most part a very tame debate. Nobody (apart from Adrian) seemed prepared to stick their necks out too far. There was only one hilarious heckling moment where one old bloke – EXACTLY like a scene from the Muppet Show stood up from one of the circle seats above and shouted “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” which completely threw the speaker.
Most of the other panelists seemed to feel that there was a place for the internet, for bloggers, for both free and paid for media and that they could all live together for the foreseeable future. Jacob Weisberg compared the knowledge accessible on the internet as being the same as a library. Some good. Some bad. The vote taken at the end by the audience suggested the same.
