Magazine / Media / Online-Media / Debate | 03/09/2007

Online versus Print

The battle between the Internet and print newspapers continues, but since the advent of Web 2.0 the Internet is experiencing a new boom. Will the Internet outshine traditional media? Or will the end result be a coexistence of the two forms from which both sides profit?

The days when the Internet was a new medium are long gone. Most of Europe's newspapers now have an online edition and there is such a thing as professional online journalism. In addition Web 2.0 is enabling users and bloggers to have their say. Do these new forms pose a threat to the traditional journalism of the printed newspapers?

Blogs are an important part of the widely acclaimed Web 2.0.
Photo: Michael Bretherton

The fear of loss of prestige and advertising revenues has prompted many publishers to invest in interactive online platforms. But the question now is whether the Internet is actually equal to or even better than the print media from the point of view of content.

Spain

In July 2007, Spain's high court ordered the seizure of all remaining copies of an issue of the satirical Spanish weekly El Jueves carrying a cartoon of Crown Prince Felipe and his wife having sex. Commenting on the affair on 21 July 2007, the Spanish daily El País argued that there were no legal grounds for the banning of the cartoon and that the caricature would continue to circulate anyway - on the Internet.

"The banning of publications in the era of the Internet and new technologies is a perfectly useless and counter-productive attempt at protecting the so called flouted rights,” the newspaper added, concluding that the traditional approach of reigning in the media by obtaining court bans no longer worked: "The decision taken by the law is contributing to what it wants to avoid, adding publicity to the caricature."

France

There have been similar, albeit more far-reaching confrontations in France this summer. Here the Internet is being hailed as the one medium that can effectively escape censorship.

A video clip of a news conference given by French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit, made by Belgian TV journalist Eric Boever, is regarded as a prominent example of this. In the video the president appears to be drunk. Initially the French public was kept in the dark about the incident. Belgian television, on the other hand, broadcast the clip, which shortly afterwards was made available for all to see on Youtube. The click ratings were phenomenal and eventually the French press was forced to report on the existence of the video.

The French public got wind of another incident of press censorship after it was revealed that Nicolas Sarkozy had blocked the publication in the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche (JDD) of an article reporting that his wife did not take part in the second round of the presidential elections. "It could be that the Bonaparte of media battles has arrived too late for this war," Jean-Noël Cuénod commented in the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève on 16 May 2007. And indeed, just a few days later journalists divulged the story on the Internet.

Yet according to Erwan Desplanques writing in Télérama on 16 June 2007, the Internet is not the only winner in this battle, because in the end the print media also benefit from the new situation: "So an article is censored? Very well, here it is on the Net, sprinkled over a continually growing number of sites. So widespread that it becomes an 'event' recuperated by the headlines transforming the censor's scissors into a boomerang."

Eastern Europe

In Eastern Europe, too, the Internet has come to be regarded as an important means of avoiding censorship. The Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap wrote on 31 July 2007 that although there is no longer official censorship in East European countries, the mentality of censorship is still very much alive in the heads of people there. Politicians and newspaper proprietors, many of them large publishers from the West or local oligarchs, protect their own interests and exert pressure on traditional media.

In an interview published in the Hungarian weekly Elet es Irodalom on 13 January 2006, Miklos Haraszti, OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media, analysed the situation in post-Soviet countries as follows: "In these new democracies, diversity of opinion is often only possible in the print media and the Internet... However, the print media is under pressure from the authorities. The penal codes of these countries give the authorities 'constitutional instruments' for punishing freedom of speech and journalistic research by calling them libel, defamation, breach of honour or betrayal of state secrets." Here, the Internet provides a loophole.

But not only journalists and bloggers take advantage of the freedom offered by the Internet - politicians do too. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, for instance, writes a blog every day. Istvan Devenyi warned on 30 June 2006 in the Hungarian paper Heti Válasz that governments should avoid abusing personal Internet diaries by making them their primary means of conveying information, admonishing: "This is a convenient communication strategy because it prevents journalists, experts and opposition politicians from asking any awkward questions."

Politicians in EU institutions and in other European countries also have their own blogs and video podcasts, which in turn are cited as sources by other media.

The Blogosphere

Politicians are taking advantage of a medium that offers all Internet users the opportunity to express their opinion. Blogs are an important part of the widely acclaimed Web 2.0, which journalist Will Hutton listed in the British newspaper The Observer on 24 December 2006 as one of the five ideas that had moved mankind forward in 2006. "A new architecture is emerging, which allows people to connect with each other in revolutionary ways. Hence blogging or YouTube, where users post and exchange videos they have taken themselves. The mushrooming of participative and enabling sites such as MySpace, Wikipedia, Skype, Flickr, Facebook, Second Life and so on are all part of the same trend."

But what about the quality of the content? On 11 June 2006 Gerfried Sperl, the chief editor of Austrian newspaper Der Standard, expressed fears that citizen journalists were not the better journalists: "Because blogging (less frequently) and posting (usually) are done anonymously, they can become instruments to achieve the opposite of freedom of opinion. Massive human rights violations are just one of the problems, minor irritations are another."

In the Financial Times of 25 September 2006 John Gapper points to another weakness, namely that a relatively small number of activists dominate proceedings on Web 2.0 sites.

The debate about swarm intelligence

French philosopher Pierre Lévy takes a different view of the situation. He believes that the Internet produces a new form of collective intelligence – a thesis that is very popular among bloggers. "We are only intelligent collectively thanks to knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Essentially, the Internet is more powerful than the printing press, the radio or the television because it allows cross-communication and better use of the collective memory," he wrote on 24 June 2007 in Le Monde.

"History has shown us again and again that a hive mind is a cruel idiot when it runs on autopilot," coountered computer scientist Jaron Lanier in an article written for the online magazine "edge".

The Bulgarian media rights activist and blogger Neli Ognajanova offered a more modest and neutral assessment of Internet proceedings. In a guest commentary for the Bulgarian newspaper Denevnik she wrote: "A blog is a luxury; the author defines its format, content, and links as he sees fit. ... The freedom of knowledge and culture are key values in the blogosphere. ... and this can be seen as a good or a bad thing depending on your position."

New online media

Participative platforms specialising in citizen journalism take advantage of this luxury. One example is the German site Readers Edition, an online newspaper set up by users. Another project with a slightly different approach went into operation this summer in France. Professional journalists working for the French newspaper Liberatíon founded the online newspaper Rue89. http://rue89.com/, which aims to produce a synthesis between professional journalism and citizen participation. The Romanian online newspaper Hotnews has also opened its doors to bloggers.

Who will survive the battle?

So far, despite the rivalry the evidence points to an interchange between print and online media, with online media reacting to printed publications and vice versa. Online media are faster and more interactive. For their part, the traditional media could refocus on their own strengths, enabling them to adopt a more relaxed attitude to the inevitable coexistence of online and print media.

Paolo Mieli, chief editor of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera and once a renowned Internet sceptic, admitted in an interview with La Stampa on 29 March 2006 that rather than a threat blogs had become an important source of information for journalists: "The secret of the printed press is that it offers quality. ... We will survive, just as we survived the advent of films and television," he concluded.

Daniel Fiene

Daniel Fiene was born in 1982 and studied history, politics and ethnology. He was editor-in-chief at Campusradio Q in Münster and heads the media blog ...
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