The main grievance among the media insiders was the failure of the internet to turn news consumption into monetary gains and in turn supporting future news production.  The poll revealed that there was serious fears that in terms of the production of news the internet did absolutely nothing in the way newspapers do,producing empirical journalism, and therefore the net is a sorry substitute for newspapers which could be reality in the near future.  The blurring of lines between fact and opinion and the bitesize information of news available on the web were the other main grievances highlighted in the poll.

It draws attention to the fact that there is a wealth of untold information and stories in the world today that never make it into the mainstream media. Perhaps it is the fact that there is just not enough column inches in newspapers or airtime on television and radio to cover everything that could be considered newsworthy on a particular day. It also demonstrates the enormous potential that citizen journalism holds to bring stories to the forefront of the public conscience that in previous times could easily have gone untold.

This highlights the fact as an online encyclopedia wikipedia is a powerhouse although when it comes to evaluating wikipedia as a strand of journalism or participatory journalism it falls short of the mark. The credibilty of wikipedia was recently brought to the public fore when Libertas member Caroline Simons used wikipedia as her source of information in a debate on The Pat Kenny Show.  Pat was not impressed at all and stated “No Caroline, I’m sorry, let me explain, Wikipedia is something that can be amended by anybody, so I can never allow that to be used as a definitive source.” In Pat we trust!!

A Moldovan journalist was placed under house arrest and barred from access to the internet and a phone after she was accused of organising mass disturbances in the capital Chisanau. The protests dubbed the “Twitter Revolution” because of how they were organised online flared up after claims emerged that the elections which returned the Communist Party to power were rigged. A BBC article on the incident can be found here.

Natalie Morar, along with some friends decided to organise peaceful demonstrations against the elections in a cafe in Moldova “It just happened through Twitter, the blogosphere, the internet, SMS, websites and all this stuff. We just met, we brainstormed for 15 minutes, and decided to make a flash mob [internet-organised spontaneous public gathering.] Within a few hours up to 15,000 people had come out on the streets to join the protests. She now faces up to 15 years in prison.

A South Korean blogger found himself in court on the obscure charge of “spreading false information with the intent of harming the public interest. The charges resulted from the unemployed blogger operating under the pseudonym Minerva (Roman godess of wisdom) making negative albeit accurate predictions about the global economy including the collapse of US bank Lehmann Brothers. The BBC article referring to the case can be found here. The court in Seoul ultimately ruled that the man was innocent of the charges and the decision is being hailed as a victory for freedom of speech across the blogging world.

The exponential rise in blogging and citizen journalists is one of the most important and defining features to arise out of the growth and development of the internet. In PoynterOnline an article by Rick Edmonds that can be found here examines the benefit that citizen journalists bring to the world of news. One argument he makes is that the conversationalist tone of blogs is more appealing to readers as they feel they talking with the writer rather than being talked at. The abilty to respond immediately to blogs by leaving your opinion also enhances this unique quality of citizen journalists. More recently the death of a protestor at the London G20 summit which was captured on mobile phone footage and uploaded onto the web illustrates the power that the internet has thrust upon the citizen journalist. Would we have learned of this story 20 years ago?

The New York Times is in trouble over its use of hyperlinks in one of their sub companies The Boston Globe.  Gatehouse Media Inc is claiming that The Globe is publishing headlines and lead sentences and linking them by use of hyperlinks back to the original articles on the Gatehouse site and in turn allowing visitors to skip their homepage and advertisements.  This is the raison d’etre of the hyperlink to instantly take an interested reader to the relative article. The dispute was set to go court in the US however was eventually settled out of court. The settlement can be viewed here.  Ultimately Gatehouse conceded that it could not prevent the publication of hyperlinks although conditions were attached. How long will it be before hyperlinks come under attack again??

It is a well documented fact that the newspaper industry is facing into the starkest crisis since the first newspapers rolled off the print machines and it has been examined in a previous blog. One of the main factors in this crisis has been the development of online news and a readers ability to access this news for free. A recent article in The Independent outlined the desire and need for newspapers to turn their online content into a profit making business model.

The problem for these newspapers is a delicate balancing act between introducing fees for online news without alienating readers. The problem is most keenly felt in the US where several leading titles have either gone under or are just about to. One of the countries most powerful titles The New York Times abandoned attempts for a fee paying readership in 2007 as numbers stalled. 

Television giant Cablevision recently purchased the Long Island based Newsday and their chief operating officer Tom Rutledge envisages an end to free online news  ”We plan to end the distribution of free web content and make our newsgathering capabilities a service to our customers.” It was perhaps inevitable that attempts to end the circulation of free online news would be made however success is far from guaranteed. Suing sites such as Google News could be a more realistic option.

The annual report of the Committee to Protect Journalists found that in 2008 the number of journalists  imprisoned worldwide was for the first time comprising of more online journalists than those in any other media form. Since the CPJ began recording in 1997 the number of imprisoned online journalists has increased every year. Worrying times indeed for potential future online journalists.  “Online journalism has changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with each other,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “But the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack.”

Illustrating the evolving media landscape, the increase in online-related jailings has been accompanied by a rise in imprisonments of freelance journalists. Forty-five of the journalists on CPJ’s census are freelancers; most of them work online. These freelancers are not employees of media companies and often do not have the legal resources or political connections that might help them gain their freedom. China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists where 24 out of 28 jailed journalists worked online reflecting the rising popularity of the medium. The CPJ has recently joined forces with internet companies such as Yahoo and Google, investors and human rights groups to form the Global Network Initiative which has established guidelines in an attempt to protect freedom of expression and online privacy in attempt to thwart the repressive actions of governments such as China.