A few days ago Federico Rampini, Repubblica's former Beijing correspondent, reported on his blog that, according to a Pew Research Center's study, the 95% of the news circulating on all medias, traditional and new, have their source in the press. Some months ago, commenting the demise of the Los Angeles Times, he asked his readers: "If one day the dropping in the profitability of the press should push the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many others (including us) on the same slope of Los Angeles Times, who will provide the raw materials with which millions of blogs in the world work? Who will actually be on the field to tell what's going on in Afghanistan or in Ruanda, in Birmania or in Tibet? Who will have the means, the structure,who will invest money to go checking personally if the orginal information is reliable, verified?".
Personally, I don't share this kind of pessimism on the information coming from blogs and, more generally, from the web. In my opinion, and I say it with some regrets, the age of the journalist on the field, always in the front line hunting the last news, has become a mith of other times, of the epoch in which, as Tiziano Terzani wrote, a correspondent left his country at the beginning of a war and arrived on the spot when the hostilities were already over. If in the past a solid and widespread web of correspondents was undoubtedly necessary in order to obtain an accurate and well-timed news on what was happening in far away countries, in the age of the Internet the structure of the correspondent office, at least as it has been intended up to now, seems to be outdated.
It is true that, as Federico Rampini writes, a blog cannot afford to open correspondent offices abroad, but it is also true that the people who write on a blog usually are personally and professionally integrated in the society they describe. Very often, they have an awareness of the reality they live in far higher than a correspondent who is sent on place from his desk in a far away editorial office in Rome or Milan. Let's take the case of Global Voices Online as an example. Started in 2005 with the support of Harvard University, today it has a basis of more than two hundred bloggers who write about realities they know very well, often translating original voices. They are not "professional" correspondents, but the information they make is of enviable quality, to such an extent that they often become the unnamed source of "inspiration" of more than one correspondent.
Local voices are a fundamental component of the information in the Internet age. Netizens, journalists, commentators, opinionists, common citizens: their words are all at hand with a simple click or a phone call. An attentive eye, able to follow the dialogue of an entire society through the voices of its members, can penetrate deeper than any correspondent does. Talking about the Chinese case, do we really believe that the greatest scandals in last years have been discovered just for the intervention of some foreign journalist? Personally, it's hard for me to recall any news recentlry reported by foreign journalists which had not appeared before on the web or on the often vituperated Chinese press. In the age of Internet, the foreign correpondent appears to be something more like a filter for already existing news, than a person actively looking for first hand news.
With this, I am not denying the importance of an information "on the field", I'm just observing how an information of this kind is not the direction in which traditional media seem to be moving to, at least in Italy. It seems to me that traditional media are obsessed with the competition with the web in terms of immediacy and swiftness. Instead of exploiting the potential of one or more people working on the spot, focusing on a kind of investigative journalism which goes in depth, the editorial offices are clinging stubbornly to compete with the Internet, a struggle which often leads to a superficial and rushed work style. If the press will go on walking this path, I doubt it will be able to maintain the fidelity of its readers for long. Conversely, is so absurd to think about a press focused on investigation and a web centered on a fast flow of informations?
If the figures of the Pew Research Center on the prevalence of the press as a source of information are reliable (and I can't tell, since I haven't read the report), the Chinese case would be a remarkable exception. According to the "Analysis on Internet Public Opinion in China 2009", a study published a month ago in the Blue Book of China's Society in 2010, on 77 incidents that last years had a great influence on Chinese public opinion, 23 (about 30%) originated from the web. As the authors of the report wrote: "The public opinion on Internet already has a deep influence on traditional media. The journalists of the press, the editors and the hosts of TV shows have already the abitude of surfing the web in order to find leads for news; the Internet 'opinion leaders' are willing to write columns for the press and appears on TV shows for interviews. Explosive materials exposed on the web is being taken up by traditional media, with the latter conducting in depth interviews and comments, raising the reliability of the news and drawing a greater attention by the government; besides, critical reports on negative social phenomenons published by traditional media have a great echo on the web, swiftly coalescing the popular will and creating a big pressure by the public opinion. This relation of mutual strenghtening between traditional and new media pushed forward the resolution of many social problems".
If in the Chinese case the high number of scandals which originated on the web may be dued to the greater severity of official control on traditional media, it's hard to deny the potentialities of the Internet as a source of informations. The strenght of the web resides in its swiftness and its rootedness in the territory. It's thanks to the diffusion of the web even in the deepest countryside that now we can gain access to realities that before remained in the background, unnoticed not only to any foreign correspondent, but often also to the Chinese citizens themselves. In this age, everyone can act as a correspondent from his city, his town or his village. Of course, verifying the trustworthiness of the informations takes times and a greater effort, but here is where the traditional media come to play. The potentials of this virtuous circle seem to be almost infinite. Maybe it's time that we stop talking about traditional media against new media.
Personally, I don't share this kind of pessimism on the information coming from blogs and, more generally, from the web. In my opinion, and I say it with some regrets, the age of the journalist on the field, always in the front line hunting the last news, has become a mith of other times, of the epoch in which, as Tiziano Terzani wrote, a correspondent left his country at the beginning of a war and arrived on the spot when the hostilities were already over. If in the past a solid and widespread web of correspondents was undoubtedly necessary in order to obtain an accurate and well-timed news on what was happening in far away countries, in the age of the Internet the structure of the correspondent office, at least as it has been intended up to now, seems to be outdated.
It is true that, as Federico Rampini writes, a blog cannot afford to open correspondent offices abroad, but it is also true that the people who write on a blog usually are personally and professionally integrated in the society they describe. Very often, they have an awareness of the reality they live in far higher than a correspondent who is sent on place from his desk in a far away editorial office in Rome or Milan. Let's take the case of Global Voices Online as an example. Started in 2005 with the support of Harvard University, today it has a basis of more than two hundred bloggers who write about realities they know very well, often translating original voices. They are not "professional" correspondents, but the information they make is of enviable quality, to such an extent that they often become the unnamed source of "inspiration" of more than one correspondent.
Local voices are a fundamental component of the information in the Internet age. Netizens, journalists, commentators, opinionists, common citizens: their words are all at hand with a simple click or a phone call. An attentive eye, able to follow the dialogue of an entire society through the voices of its members, can penetrate deeper than any correspondent does. Talking about the Chinese case, do we really believe that the greatest scandals in last years have been discovered just for the intervention of some foreign journalist? Personally, it's hard for me to recall any news recentlry reported by foreign journalists which had not appeared before on the web or on the often vituperated Chinese press. In the age of Internet, the foreign correpondent appears to be something more like a filter for already existing news, than a person actively looking for first hand news.
With this, I am not denying the importance of an information "on the field", I'm just observing how an information of this kind is not the direction in which traditional media seem to be moving to, at least in Italy. It seems to me that traditional media are obsessed with the competition with the web in terms of immediacy and swiftness. Instead of exploiting the potential of one or more people working on the spot, focusing on a kind of investigative journalism which goes in depth, the editorial offices are clinging stubbornly to compete with the Internet, a struggle which often leads to a superficial and rushed work style. If the press will go on walking this path, I doubt it will be able to maintain the fidelity of its readers for long. Conversely, is so absurd to think about a press focused on investigation and a web centered on a fast flow of informations?
If the figures of the Pew Research Center on the prevalence of the press as a source of information are reliable (and I can't tell, since I haven't read the report), the Chinese case would be a remarkable exception. According to the "Analysis on Internet Public Opinion in China 2009", a study published a month ago in the Blue Book of China's Society in 2010, on 77 incidents that last years had a great influence on Chinese public opinion, 23 (about 30%) originated from the web. As the authors of the report wrote: "The public opinion on Internet already has a deep influence on traditional media. The journalists of the press, the editors and the hosts of TV shows have already the abitude of surfing the web in order to find leads for news; the Internet 'opinion leaders' are willing to write columns for the press and appears on TV shows for interviews. Explosive materials exposed on the web is being taken up by traditional media, with the latter conducting in depth interviews and comments, raising the reliability of the news and drawing a greater attention by the government; besides, critical reports on negative social phenomenons published by traditional media have a great echo on the web, swiftly coalescing the popular will and creating a big pressure by the public opinion. This relation of mutual strenghtening between traditional and new media pushed forward the resolution of many social problems".
If in the Chinese case the high number of scandals which originated on the web may be dued to the greater severity of official control on traditional media, it's hard to deny the potentialities of the Internet as a source of informations. The strenght of the web resides in its swiftness and its rootedness in the territory. It's thanks to the diffusion of the web even in the deepest countryside that now we can gain access to realities that before remained in the background, unnoticed not only to any foreign correspondent, but often also to the Chinese citizens themselves. In this age, everyone can act as a correspondent from his city, his town or his village. Of course, verifying the trustworthiness of the informations takes times and a greater effort, but here is where the traditional media come to play. The potentials of this virtuous circle seem to be almost infinite. Maybe it's time that we stop talking about traditional media against new media.
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