New Journalism started as an alternative to the inverted pyramid, corporate journalism of the day. In it’s most basic definition: New Journalism reported the truth using the techniques of a novel.

Wall, M in Blogs of War talks about the idea of post modernism in Journalism:

Postmodern journalism is small, local stories about people that convey human suffering and reject a meta-narrative…this will give rise to non-official voices…news blogs are therefore the form that post modern journalism will take

New Journalism was also a postmodern movement. It happened in reaction to the corporate and capitalist modernity that was sweeping through America at the time.

So, it is clear to me that blogging may have a future after all. If, and this is a big if, it can emulate the likes of Hunter S Thompson, Truman Capote, Jimmy Breslin, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, blogging may just become a massive success.

Blogging must continue to stand for the ant-corporate menace that has engulfed journalism. And maybe through blogging we will start getting truly independent news.

Allbritton is a former Associated Press and New York Daily News reporter. At the start of the Iraq invasion in 2003 he started his blog as www.back-to-iraq.com. But this blog was a blog with a difference.

He began asking people, or more specifically readers, for donations to aid him in his reporting in Iraq. He could not get funded from any traditional media outlet for the job. Allbritton raised $15,000 and reported INDEPENDENTLY from Iraq.

What came out of this was truly some of the best reporting form the war. Unlike most journalists at the time, Allbritton was not embedded with any army – he worked alone. An example of how hard it can be when a journalist is embedded is that of the BBC’s renowned war correspondent John Simpson. Simpson, who later apologised, said that “liberating” a country is fantastic feeling when he reached Kabul with the American and British forces.

However Allbritton had none of these problems. That made his reporting great and some of the best of the war.

Could this be the future? Blogging is, in some cases terrible, and in others great. But could this be the answer to the conglomorate corpoations being unwilling to spend the money on journlaists in war zones. Does it mean that we can finally get a truly balanced and accurate account of war and not PR spin from the armies?

We are the children of the revoulution and we must embrace these ideas and perfect them, well done Allbritton.

Figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation Electronic (ABCE) show that the Guardian website registered a drop of nearly a million visitors. However the website is still the most popular site with 18,703,811 visitors in a three month period.

On the other hand, the Mirror group, more specifically the Daily Telegraph, registered amazing gains of nearly five million extra visitors to the site. Nearly a 40% increase on the previous figures.

These results are quite similar to the latest circulation figures, which are in a previous post. Some papers are declining and others are increasing (Albeit in far smaller numbers). So why do we continue to hear that newspapers are finished? A little premature I think.

He said that economic pressure would drive journalists to work on other platforms.

According to Myners the Guardian Group appointed 60 new journalists in the last year.

He said: “If you define journalism in a broader sense I think there’s been no decline in journalism – they’re just working in a different medium. They’re working online, they’re working in blogs, they’re working on radio, they’re working in local television.”

It is interesting to note too that during my research for the essay I found a quote from a media analyst who says that the Daily Telegraph’s staff won’t even notice when the paper is not printed because they work in so many different areas now.

Again it seems as if the dooms day-ers have got their way and have ingrained in us a sense that journalism is finished. Well according to a member of one of the most successful newspaper groups in Britain journalism is not finished.

This site is really quite revolutionary. It is truly interactive and is the best in citizen journalism.

readers can directly contact the writer/journalist/reporter with feedback and extra information. In fact, the reader is encouraged to do so.

However there is one major and serious problem with the site in my opinion.

The quality of writing is terrible. Here are a couple of intros to pieces that appeared on the site on Tuesday 22nd April:

After six weeks during which no actual votes were taken but much money and hot air was expended, the race for the Democratic nomination for president resumes in earnest this Tuesday, when New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama square off for a share of Pennsylvania’s 158 delegates.

And:

The coalition government of nationalist the Awami National Party (ANP) and the liberal democrat Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Pakistan’s North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) released the leader of a banned pro-Taliban movement from jail as part of its first step toward negotiated settlement of the law and order problems in tribal areas and some settled districts.

These are terribly written intros and are very hard to digest and understand. If such sites are hoping to continue, and become better they must teach their contributors how to write properly for news.

In the main however, the site adheres o many of the democratic principles of online journalism and is truly revolutionary. If it gets the quality of writing under control it may become seriously important.

 Indymedia.ie

Again Indy media in the main is a pretty good site. It certainly gives an alternative view as compared with the mainstream media who tend to ignore many of the stoire that are on the site. Again also it is interactive and will take all its content from citizen journalists.

There are a couple of problems however. Firstly the site is clearly left leaning. This is not a bad thing. But if people want to get the whole story and the truth this is not the place for it. It gives a biased one side view and really the rule that they do not give space to facists, is really a dressed up way of saying no right wingers please.

And again some of the writing is terrible. How are people expected to consume this stuff if the writing is so poor. These sites will never take off if they continue to publish such unedeted crap.

Here is an example of something which should never be allowed:

Thanks also to all those groups who helped us poster and who publicised the demonstration and who came along. Thanks to HOPI, to the ISN and the WSM, to Eirigi and Sinn Fein, to Anti-war Ireland and the Irish Anti War Movement, to the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers, to Connolly youth and to Labour youth. And thanks also to the newly-formed TUFP – Trade Union Friends of Palestine. If there’s anyone I left out, it wasn’t deliberate – its just that so many groups came together to help us out.

I am personally in the same boat on Gaza and the West Bank. But what is this? Is this a press release? Because it certainly isn’t news…

Conclusion

The problem as I have said in previous posts and in this one is quality. Some of the writing it seems could have been done by children. This is no good. People need to be able to digest information, especially on the internet as people’s attention span is drastically reduced when looking at a screen.

I believe the same problems affect citizen journalism that affects mainstream journalism. On sites like ohmynews and indymedia there is the gatekeeper aspect to deal with too. It may be less apparent nevertheless it is still a factor.

If these type of sites are to flourish they need to improve their standards, drastically.

However there is a simple problem that means citizen journalism will never take off and, ultimately, fail. Money.

John Ndege, in an article on Journalism.co.uk , says that all citizen journalism is doomed because the reporters who bring it in cannot be paid.

Ndege was the founder of scriblesheet, a citizen journalist site, however the site has gone bust.

In an interview on guardianunlimited.com, Ndege says: “You need money to recruit writers but you need writers to make money. I felt it kind of betrayed the vision of citizen journalism which was supposed to be about the man or woman on the street telling his or her story, not about the trained professional. Perhaps that is some misplaced idealism, at the end of the day this is supposed to be a business and the business is dependent on well written articles.”

Journalists, whether they are citizen journalists or not, should be paid for quality work. It should not be a cherry-picking exercise for the big corporations. If journalists are not paid, citizen journalism has a rocky future ahead.

Cbseyemobile.com is a site where people can upload there own videos and independent content.

Journalism.co.uk says that the iReport website is better than CBS’s new venture. They say that the CNN effort is far better because it allows “slicker” social networking.

The rise in these types of sites is a pointer to the future of journalism. I think that citizen journalism can exist along side traditional journalism, and in some cases can be a resource for journalists to use to reach the masses.

The article said that some newspapers are considering selling more ad ons, known as covermounts, to boost ailing sales.

According to figures released by ABC, an independent media watchdog, the Sun and the Financial Times are the only two dailies with increased circulation figures from October 07 to March 08. .31% and 1.12% respectively.

The situation is the same for Sundays in the same period. The Daily Star Sunday is up 3.76% and likewise the Observer is up a meagre .93%.

Everything else is down with the People and Sunday Express taking serious hits at over 11%.

The fact that not many newspapers are making serious losses would point to the fact that maybe circulation figures are levelling off. The theory that newspapers are finished would seem a little premature.

Notice that, as usual, there is a moving ad in the banner. Most sites have these, however some are not recognisable as advertising. The Canberra Times web page on the other hand  immediately conveys to the reader that this is an ad.

Advertising here is mainly down the right hand side of the screen, the usual place for ads. However there is also an ad in the area where text goes (just under the article). I would presume that anyone that reads the article will see the ad and look at it long enough to decode it.

Compare this with the Seattle Times and this pieceand we see that American newspapers are far more agressive when it comes to advertising. Again there are those moving ads. But this time they are at the very top of the screen – the place the eye probably looks first. Then we see the banner and immediately underneath that we have another ad before the story has even started. At this point it is interesting to note that the only colour on the page is that from the ads. Maybe this is a conscious decison on a part of the web editor to make the advertising stand out far more.

In the Seattle Times we also see that there are ads within the text. This time they are not at the end of the article but are central and within the text. It would definitely draw the eye while reading and be decoded, and therefore, the ad will work.

Overall the advertising content is definitely different to the editorial content. To a trained eye the difference is immediately apparent. However, most eyes may not be that trained. This is who advertisers are looking to ensnare.

In the piece titled: Interaction between print and electronic media seems limited, Fitzgerald says: I have frequently been struck by the way in which the electronic media often seem reluctant to publicise stories that break in the print media – and equally by what seems in many cases to be a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the print media to follow up major stories that break in radio or , more commonly, on TV.”

This is an interesting point. Very rarely do we see stories broke by newspapers on the internet. However, my memory suggests that it has been done the other way around. For example the recent Prince Harry in Afghanistan debacle.

Could it be that the supposed xenephobia of newspapers when it comes to new technology be totally over the top? Could it be that the internet and technology are actually guilty of not facilitating the other when it comes to the battle between print and the internet?

The word battle is a bit disingenuous. However it is something that the internet community would certainly believe they are in. Compare this to the facilitary nature of newspaper towards technology and one can see that maybe the internet has an agenda in all of this.

Fitzgerald asks: Is this perhaps a reflection of some kind of jealousy between the tow arms of media?” I think that the old man of politics in Ireland has hit the nail on the head.

The new media is jealous of print for one reason: Print and traditional media have an authenticity that the internet and all it’s technology can never, and in my opinion will never have.