Magazine / Society / European Public / Article | 28/01/2008

Life beyond the market square

The ECF, Institute of Human Sciences (IWM), German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and Eurozine organised on 8 November in Vienna a workshop for European online media initiatives. ECF's Tommi Laitio explains why.

Is Internet destroying quality writing? Is our future a sad caricature of the public sphere where the only ones surviving in the Darwinist battle for attention are the one's catering for the ugly side of humanity? Are we destined to irrelevance when more people know the name of Simon Cowell (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Cowell) than Jürgen Habermas (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas)?

Photo: photocase.de

The answer is simply no if one would ask the people gathered in Vienna. There is room for the amateur and for the professional online and there is still a demand for quality writing. The blog of a Dutch housewife is not an imminent threat for De Volkskrant (www.volkskrant.nl). And like the examples of Le Monde Diplomatique (www.monde-diplomatique.fr) and The Economist (www.economist.com) show us, good business and dedicated writing can still fit under the same roof. As the amount of information sources only keeps growing, one could even provide a highly optimistic prognosis on the future of quality journalism: we, the citizens, need even more skilled and reliable analysis in order to keep our elected representatives on leash. Blaming weblogs and online initiatives for the decline of newspaper subscriptions is both an irresponsible and ill-informed act. As online projects by newspapers like the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat (blogit.hs.fi) show us, topical blogs by staff journalists have helped the newspaper to re-connect with its audience.

It is evident that scaremongering on the death of the intellectual does not take us very far and we do need more in-depth analysis on the impact of the digital revolution. We need both to intellectualise and specify what we talk about. Internet should be seen as a tool rather as a medium and therefore comparisons need to be made rather between OpenDemocracy (www.opendemocracy.net) and Prospect (www.prospect-magazine.co.uk) rather than between the Internet and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (www.faz.de). We should not try to simplify the discussion into good or bad. Simultaneously as several essayistic journals struggle with their print runs, collaborations like Eurozine (www.eurozine.com) would have been next to impossible before the Internet.

As the so-called Web 2.0 shows us, the boom on the Internet is not on digitising content but on changes of behaviour. How we interact, share and produce information together challenges traditional notions of copyright and exclusivity. However, changing the dominating paradigm on the role of the media is not easy – especially for many of the established actors. The fierce criticism in the German printed press towards the free daily newspaper review eurotopics showed how the new culture is perceived by many of the major media corporations as threatening the honorary status they traditionally enjoy in the national context. Including initiatives like eurotopics to the toolkit of journalists still demands a lot of marketing, convincing and liaising.

When one brings a group of transnational media initiatives together, it does not take too long before the discussion moves to the financial basis of their work. The question is highly important: who should be paying for the comparison of European information, for investigative journalism and for the networking amongst the initiatives? Should the invoice be covered by the consumers, public or private foundations, national governments or perhaps the European institutions? Currently foundations like Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (www.rj.se), the ECF (www.eurocult.org), Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (www.hssaatio.fi) and public institutions like The German Federal Agency for Civic Education (www.bpb.de) are stepping up to fill the gap. The question, however, is how we can create conditions for journalism led by societal developments rather than grant policies. The call for funders to cover overhead costs in partnerships of several years was strong within the Vienna participants. If you ask the editors, the funders should allow the initiatives to grow – even into profitable businesses.

But before major policy changes, the interaction amongst the different actors needs to improve. Involvement of established publishers and editors in this discussion is the next big challenge. A higher level of trust is needed so the shared challenges can be discussed openly. Genuine collaboration will not emerge without a reasonable level of trust. But most importantly, we need an urgent update on the way we think about interaction. We tend to be still too stuck on the old idea of the entire village gathering to the market square to discuss the joint issues. We can do better than that. A great level of networking and trust-building is invisible and therefore next to impossible to identify. We can interact on different levels and at different times.

All and all, the situation requires patience and better tools – from the funders as well as from the grantees.

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