My OperaNews and weblogs
Saturday, January 22, 2005 11:11:09 AM
To confirm what I was saying yesterday about the weblogs as a more humane way of coping with the endless flow of information, allowing to be at the same time updated and not superficial nor overwhelmed by infos and news, I discovered that the UK leading newspaper, the
GUARDIAN
, started in September 2004 his
Newsblog
, the main part of which is,
in their own words
, to "tell you some of the main stories we're planning to cover during the day, let you in on the editorial discussions that go on behind the scenes in our newsroom, and give you an opportunity to offer your comments and suggestions". This kind of behaviour is, in my opinion, a good compromise between the overwhelming, excessive, biased and possibly even unreliable information that came out from "occasional" bloggers and web-addicted people, and the professional newsmaking that characterise traditional journalism. Journalist are biased all right, but they have nonetheless to respond, at least theoretically, to a moral code. Moreover, they are used to discovering, investigating and reporting news for that is their job.
I am not saying that you can and should find all the news for free in internet, which is not feasible, of course, given the fact that professional journalist must be paid, but still, through browsing and reading this newsblog you can make an educated guess on what newspaper is more interesting for you day by day, which one has the most interesting comments on the daily events etc. In the past people could only read one newspaper, and in this way he had a biased view of the world, filtered by the editorial board of that paper. Very few people bought more than one paper. Now everybody has more filtering option and can create his own filter. You don't have to know and read everything, but you have to know what YOU choose to know.
Le monde did a similar thing with his blog service .
In Italy La repubblica tried to do something with many different blogs by many different experts on many different topics. When a new, interesting and controversial issue came out, they opened a blog to investigate it further. This is also interesting, but sooner or later the blog becomes something else. I will make an example. Let's say that one recent topic of interest was the problem of an European constitution, and, as it happens, you have a journalist who is interested and knows about Europe, the history of European community, etc. If you convince him to open a blog on the issue involved in that discussion, it is helpful because helps people to know and understand more. But after the journalist did say what he had to say about it specifically, inevitably he will start to talk about Europe in general, about things european. Ultimately, when the urgence of the topic is lost, because the issues at stake are solved, the blog inevitably become a way of expressing himself more than discussing about a topic. The journalist, the man, is the centre of it, not the topic.
What I am saying is that the Repubblica experiment failed, in my opinion, not because it wasn't interesting in the beginning (a blog can be succesfully used to discuss a specific topic in more detail), but because these bloggers continued to write indefinitely, even when the original urgence and usefulness disappeared. To make it entirely successful, one has to stop it, not to transform it in a self-serving tool for the journalist.
I am not saying that you can and should find all the news for free in internet, which is not feasible, of course, given the fact that professional journalist must be paid, but still, through browsing and reading this newsblog you can make an educated guess on what newspaper is more interesting for you day by day, which one has the most interesting comments on the daily events etc. In the past people could only read one newspaper, and in this way he had a biased view of the world, filtered by the editorial board of that paper. Very few people bought more than one paper. Now everybody has more filtering option and can create his own filter. You don't have to know and read everything, but you have to know what YOU choose to know.
Le monde did a similar thing with his blog service .
In Italy La repubblica tried to do something with many different blogs by many different experts on many different topics. When a new, interesting and controversial issue came out, they opened a blog to investigate it further. This is also interesting, but sooner or later the blog becomes something else. I will make an example. Let's say that one recent topic of interest was the problem of an European constitution, and, as it happens, you have a journalist who is interested and knows about Europe, the history of European community, etc. If you convince him to open a blog on the issue involved in that discussion, it is helpful because helps people to know and understand more. But after the journalist did say what he had to say about it specifically, inevitably he will start to talk about Europe in general, about things european. Ultimately, when the urgence of the topic is lost, because the issues at stake are solved, the blog inevitably become a way of expressing himself more than discussing about a topic. The journalist, the man, is the centre of it, not the topic.
What I am saying is that the Repubblica experiment failed, in my opinion, not because it wasn't interesting in the beginning (a blog can be succesfully used to discuss a specific topic in more detail), but because these bloggers continued to write indefinitely, even when the original urgence and usefulness disappeared. To make it entirely successful, one has to stop it, not to transform it in a self-serving tool for the journalist.
