50 influential people in online journalism

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 November 2006 at 11:46
Tags: Journalism

Our list of 50 influential people in online journalism has generated quite a bit of comment — and not just from the bloggers gloating about their prominent inclusion in this excercise in “incestuous media backscratching”.

Six judges had been asked to rank a list of nominees generated by readers‘ submissions to a thread on /discuss Journalism. As we feared expected, this methodology caused some rather odd results.

As with all such lists, apples and oranges were compared. Moguls controlling media empires were named alongside individual bloggers; national newspaper editors next to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. All of these people are “influential” in different ways — some for having ideas, others for executing them, and others for wisely throwing money at them.

For that reason alone, lists of this sort should never be read as definitive statements and always as conversation-starters about what’s currently perceived as important. In that regard, it has worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, the reputational methodology made the outcome a bit of a popularity contest.

As one commenter noted, the list featured Rupert Murdoch, but not Lord Rothermere. Perhaps this is because Murdoch has made prominent pronouncements on the role the Internet plays in News Corp’s strategy, while Rothermere a rather less visible chairman.

Several commenters noted the prominence of Guardian staff in the top ten. Again, this is an artefact of methodology rather than any latent pro-Graun bias at Press Gazette. The Guardian’s editors and executives are not only respected for the outcomes they have produced at Guardian Unlimited, but are also not shy about trumpeting their views on new media on the conference circuit.

There are many surprises about who failed to make the list, though. One glaring and worrying result of the process was the tiny proportion of women included on the list.

Some seemingly-obvious individuals also failed to be nominated or ranked in the top 50 by our judges. Although the voting process happening while the Telegraph was loudly moving to its new multimedia newsroom, the man who implemented the hub-and-spoke system in Victoria, new editor Will Lewis, strangely failed to get on the list.

Other commentators have suggested some of the other missing names.

Andy Dickinson, for example, suggests Matt Mullenweg, who developed the Wordpress software that is used to publish countless blogs, including this one:

You could argue that blogging software has contributed to the development of a blogosphere that enabled many of the people on the Press Gazette list to be there.

I would put that kind of enabling power it at the same level as something like Camilla Wright’s Popbitch which, as well as showing how forums and networks really do work, has propped up the gossip columns for the last few years.

Nobody nominated Mullenweg, who was profiled last weekend as part of the Guardian Weekend cover story about the people behind Web 2.0, but I would argue that he certainly belongs on this list — perhaps ahead of some of the people who are there for using the tool he created.

Who else is missing?

Tags: Journalism