We Media: Hope for a better day
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 4 May 2006 at 09:06
Tags: Journalism, Reuters, We Media
It’s Day Two of the We Media Global Forum extravaganza, this time at the Reuters HQ in Canary Wharf. It’s all being webcast again.
It’s fair to say that yesterday’s first day failed to impress everyone in the room. As the event dragged on, the knot of bloggers I was sitting in grew noticeably bored, restless, and irritated by what many percieved as the arrogant and unresponsive tone of some of the speakers on the stage.
It was not entirely clear what the collective pronoun In “We Media” referred to. Certainly it couldn’t have referred to the non-professional citizen journalists, bloggers and other participatory media enthusiasts that all of this is supposed to be about. The $800 price tag alone ensured that all but the working journalists and a few lucky souls with fellowships were representatives of large organisations.
Many people noticed the increasingly negative tone. Kevin Anderson was unimpressed by the views expressed by Helen Boaden, who he described as someone “several levels of bureaucracy above my head at the BBC”.
Rachel North, the only blogger who actually made it to the stage amidst the sea of suits:
I was struck by the sense of Them and Us, the ‘old media’ wary but seemingly wanting to engage with the new, and the new media frustrated, sometimes chippy, often passionately challenging. Why the tension, I wondered? It’s all content, wherever you source it from, and you choose what you consume and how much faith you put in it.
The discontent was apparently most strongly voiced on an unofficial IRC channel, and came to it’s most frank expression at last night’s excellent We Media Fringe event, which was masterfully organised on short notice by Robin Hamman, the discontent continued. Suw Charman used her speech to issue a call to action for a more critical response to today’s sessions. PaidContent.org has a good summary of her views.
It seems to have worked. The first question fielded by Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer this morning was one demanding how traditional news organisations would change their behaviour from merely worrying about how best to “incorporate” so-called “citizen journalism”.
Glocer responded that Reuters journalists have already changed their reporting behavour to include tracking blogs in addition to companies’ official statements that they traditionally relied on.
Tags: Journalism, Reuters, We Media
