The Digital Online News Questions Will Not Go Away
To pay or not to pay that is, indeed, one of the big questions for contemporary journalism. But there is much more involved than mere fancy business models. Digital news online is shaking the very foundations of traditional journalism and its place in society. That is good.
I have written before about many of the issues so I will not be repeating myself. Why? Because the interested reader can check out my past via the internet. That is why. It is that easy and that simple. Online news must respect the will and the intelligence of the active reader. Yes, I said that, the active reader. The online news reader today is active and smart and is no longer the traditional passive reader that sucks in information and opinion.
The journalist today will find it difficult, thank god, to act as the ”Guardian of Truth” with the special authority that is born and bred of passive readers. I welcome this. This can be the new birth pangs of a democratic news room.
Today we remain in shock and awe of that media baron Rupert Murdoch. He still insists on having ”his” readers pay for his online news sites. As far as I am concerned let him do it. Bring it on. I really could not give a damn because I do not need the Murdoch Empire for my information, my news or my opinion leaders. If the Murdoch machine went bust I really could not give a damn. So let him try and charge people to read his rubbish sites. So that is Murdoch done with as far as I am concerned.
Other more enlightened media leaders remain enthusiastic about the digital online news future. The main theme here is to remain open to the world as it is and as it is going. The world is opening up. To put a ”Pay-Wall” up and to make a small box of paid up clients is really to dig your head in the sand. The world will remain opening up and moving and for those with their heads in the sand they will not see this. Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian has this view. I agree.
Some State Broadcasters have got it right. YLE in Finland is invaluable as a news source. It is paid for by a kind of cooperative effort and through public funding. Good. (Murdoch and his tribe hates this but he hates cooperation). The BBC is a wonderful world-wide service. Again great. This shows what good use tax payments can be put too. Long live the BBC and YLE. Other good examples are to be found.
But State Broadcasters must never hold the monopoly. We know that. News is far too easily manipulated to serve this or that power-block. We need the open-ness of the internet sites and the online news sites too. Democratic hopes rely upon such independent sites. Even Rupert Murdoch has some uses sometimes. Sometimes.
This brings me to think about our own site here. Our Pohjolan Sanomat online news site needs a cooperative and a community spirit if it is to survive and flourish. I believe that any ”PayWall” charging plan will fail big time. However the real work must be paid for in some way or another. Nothing is ever for free. Here comes crunch time. This is exactly where the shit hits the fan as they say.
My own opinion here is that our Pohjolan Sanomat online site should be, just that, OURS. It should have a sense of a cooperative spirit and a sense of community. I do not mean that it must copy a Facebook or a Twitter but I do mean that our online site needs to INCLUDE MEMBERS in as many events as possible. We need to link up and be active.
We need to create events and conversations whereby MEMBERS are involved. We need more linking up with the local community and we need more face-to-face interaction. Cooperation is the key word.
You will notice that I have avoided any talk about a famous ”Business Plan”. Why? I will tell you why. To begin with a business plan ideology refuses personal cooperations and conversational futures. Let us begin to move ahead with a basic open philosophy first and foremost. After awhile some fashionable business plan can be discussed. First we need the decent product and the content and the reason-for-being. Second comes the business and the numbers and that which Rupert Murdoch takes as the first thing.
So, I believe, we here should be considering now why we exist. Why we want to exist. What it is that we can do and do well? What is our Pohjolan Sanomat online site meant to be? What open-forms of cooperation can we activate?
Digital online news sites are interactive and open. They can never be closed. Our online site needs, I think, to begin to turn into a more club-like thing where more events are held with members. Yes I said WITH. That with is a key word for the future.
By the way many might disagree with my analysis of the future of digital online news sites. As far as I am concerned that is quite exciting. I would love to listen to those that have totally different perspectives. So would our readers. So it is so damned simple. Just write a reply and make my words wobble like a jellyfish in a windy sea. Could be fun too. Go on there is a challenge. Make me wobble. I might find that rather erotic.
But be warned. You can call Rupert Murdoch a dinosaur brain or even a dickhead but you cannot call him a f£#king cancer as one past journalist did on TV a few years back.
Steve Bowles
