If you're going to charge for content...

...then expect to be charged for content. Genius.

Future of Journalism Notes 3: Swedish business journalists and blogs

Just rounding up the notes on the Future of Journalism Conference in Cardiff last week - a short piece on this paper on Swedish business journalists and blogs.

Blog-Journalist Relations: Business News in Transformation
(Maria Grafstrom and Karolina Windell)

This study looked at the use of blogs by business journalists in the press in Sweden.
- used content analysis and a survey
- 187 business journalists, 79 replied. Response rate 42%.
- Covered all the main business news outlets in Sweden.
- 0 articles in 2001 mentioned the word blog.
- Over 1,000 articles containing 'blog' in 2006.
- 61% of the articles mentioning the word blog were stories about blogs.
- 16% of the articles include a direct quote from a blog.
- 23% of the articles referenced a blog.
- 63% of journalists strongly disagreed with the statement 'I reference blogs in my work'.

One Swedish business journalist said: "I have simply no time to read blogs. I have not yet seen any reason as to why I should prioritise something factual oriented less in favour of the more opinion oriented blogsophere".

The Swedish researchers said that journalists are referencing blogs but at the same time they are quite hesitant to admit that they do so. They claimed that there seems to be a difference between blogs and other online sources.

Links for today: BBC Newsnight, Twitter and a few others

BBC Newsnight, Twitter and journalism

I couldn't possibly comment on Newsnight's interview with Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, but here's some links for those of you who are interested...

• 'Read it and Weep': Guardian transcript of the interview
  
• Shane Richmond: 'Newsnight is not a form of journalism'
• Twitter responses to the interview: loved it, embarrassing, do Newsnight understand?

Blogging in Afghanistan

• There's a lot of news from Afghanistan at the moment. Most of it far less positive than this blog post about an online journalism and blogging workshop in Helmand. Twenty-eight attendees had to share two computers but they were determined to learn new ways to make their voices heard.
  

Money makes the media world go round?

• Rupert Murdoch to charge for news content online. The proprietor of the Sun noted that "quality of journalism is not cheap".
  
• Some have faith in the link economy.
  
• Others are not at all convinced by the marketplace of the 'free'.
  

'Why journalists deserve low pay'

An excellent article by Robert Picard of Sweden's Jonkoping University explaining why journalists shouldn't expect to be paid:

"Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.

Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models."

Links for today: The influence and history of blogging

Blogging - contributing to the crunch?

• Ok, so shares are tumbling, banks are being bailed out all over the world, and you really know there's a crisis when Iceland's economy is in meltdown. (Honestly, since when did Iceland become such an important cog in the global capitalist machine?) Anyway, I digress. When things go wrong, blame needs to be apportioned. So who or what to blame? Well what about Robert Peston's blog? This post apparently caused banking shares to fall the other day and here we see just how much influence Robert Peston has. (Take note of the tiny numbers on the graph).
  

A history of blogging

• Scott Rosenberg is writing a history of blogging. I'm looking forward to the publication and he talks to Mediashift about it here.

The Future of Journalism

• Dr Axel Bruns, an academic based in Australia, has been to a conference on journalism. He comes to a conclusion that could easily be misattributed to Jeff Jarvis:

"Overall, though, what also struck me during the event was the very blinkered vision of many in the mainstream industry. I got the sense that there's something not unlike Stockholm syndrome at work here - the longer you work in the industry, the harder is it to imagine any other way of working than by following the routines established long ago."