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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Some are very flexible, others distrust Internet and say: listen, I am from the
newspaper.
We found little or no policy on professional multimedia training for journalists at the
hard copy newsroom. In some cases more experienced colleagues offer internal
training and guidance. This seems to be an ad hoc solution. Most online journalists
have had a multi media education or extra training. People mostly help each other.
According to the interviewees, online activities have not generated income thus far.
Web shops sometimes do make a turn over.
In terms of economic activity exemplary remarks are:
The web shop works well. Bu we should focus more on online advertising.
Nobody knows the golden formula. And you can’t say: it doesn’t work so we will stop.
Editorial convergence
Asked how convergence was established, media admitted that they were still in an
experimental phase. The UGC has not lived up to expectations. Two out of nine
newspapers said that journalists increasingly worked with blogs and responses from
the public as a new type of news source. However, they considered these responses
to be of limited value. One newspaper stopped service to UGC altogether.
In this respect exemplary remarks are:
In most case public response is useless.
Ninety-nine percent of the comments are useless.
But our interlocutors also mentioned scoops that originate from tips through the
website.
The limited cooperation between online and hard copy journalists is illustrated by the
reluctant attitude towards the use of online content:
There is hardly cross-referencing and scoops are kept a secret sometimes.
We’d like to keep our readers at our website so we do not refer to other sites or even
to our own newspaper. Neither does the paper, by the way.
We have referencing to the online newspaper website as a structural policy, but don’t
expect much of it.
Hardly any newspaper makes video productions on a substantial scale. However, the
general idea is that viewers expect news video online. In some cases, cooperation
has been established with regional television and radio stations.
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