Here's an enlightening exchange from the world of blogs on how mainstream media uses new media – the discourse between Mark Kraft, one of LiveJournal founders, whose blog Insomnia is well worth a look, once the two protagonists have uncrossed their wires.
In this post Kraft takes on trade magazine Press Gazette's reporting of a non-existent spat between himself and head of the BBC World Service, Richard Sambrook.
And while we are talking about blogs talking about mainstream media – an excellent post here from fellow Guardian columnist, publisher and blogger extraordinaire Jeff Jarvis about the future of the printed press – and I'm not just saying that because the Guardian features in it, but because its wide ranging sweep over US and European newspapers is highly informative – here is just a small part of what Jarvis says about how newspapers should reorganize their newsrooms:
"From an editorial perspective, this means we can't start with a goal of saving the newsrooms we now have. We have to find new efficiencies (how much do we spend on commodity news?) and new ways to help the public gather and share news (see hyperlocal citizens media) and concentrate on our real value: reporting. We need to think in terms of relationships, sharing training, information, promotion, and trust. How can we use online and the join with our public to grow bigger and share more information more quickly? That must be our goal."
Jarvis goes on to say, quite reasonably to my mind, that one key job publishers have to perform now is educating advertisers about the value of their online audiences.
It is strange against the background of what is happening on the web, and in particular the evolution of the advertising model that WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell – a man for whom I have the utmost respect – has a very different view of how newspapers should raise revenue - getting audiences to pay for content.
I don't wish to contradict Britain's most successful media entrepreneur, but I just don't see it myself – Sir Martin maintains he "would pay for breaking news" but I find this particularly hard to believe – you might think breaking news has a value, but would you really log on to a site, remember your password and wait to jump the barrier where there was a breaking story unfolding?
Besides which, in the UK the BBC with its £100m a year of free web journalism and 200 journalists dedicated to just the online newsdesk to compete with, making charging in this market all but impossible.
