Political Reporting and the Internet

Last Friday I attended the Brisbane Writers Festival discussion on Political Reporting and the Internet.

It was a good hour long session with probably 100+ attendees which raised some interesting issues. While I didn’t agree with everything that the speakers said, it was a nice precursor to get into some deeper analysis during the Australian Blogging Conference in a little over a week.

Below are my notes from the review of the discussion panel which I did on-air with ABC 612 Brisbane and ABC Local Radio statewide in Queensland on Monday night.

I’ve condensed what everyone said into the current and possible future of online political journalism as well as the main problems the discussion panel raised. Unlike my brief notes, Derek Barry from Woolly Days has done a much more thorough account of what each speaker said.

Political Reporting and the Internet
Date: 14 September 2007
Venue: SLQ Queensland Terrace
Speakers: Greg Barns, Christian Kerr, Margaret Simons and Graham Young chaired by Jose Borghino

Current Situation
The Internet is a disruptive technology that while different and chaotic presents opportunities for the existing players and new entrants to better inform, report and analyse news.

Based on current circulation figures the last newspaper will be printed in April 2040.

Anyone can be a journalist (is part of being a human being in the 21st century)

With citizen media quantity of journalism has increased but quality has not.

While the old media empires of Murdoch(with The Oz) and Packer (9’s Sunday) valued journalism the future looks to be all about fast food type journalism (eg. packaged, available and unhealthy)

Online political reporting is currently poor. Newspaper masterhead’s web sites are focused on lowest common denominator journalism (celebrity stories and bizarre news) and have not yet taken advantage of the depth of reporting available online and made a product out of it.

Australian political blogs are limited to around 200 or so of the same voices.

Bloggers have a reverse snobbery attitude towards mainstream media/paid journalists. Mainstream media/paid journalists don’t respect bloggers.

The Future
Death of the media empire that drives quality journalism. Everything owned by investment companies focused on audience size/revenues.

Investigative journalism does not fit into the future plans of the existing players (fast food journalism only).

Online media properties need to allow for paid journalists and citizen journalists to engage and interact in meaningful way around the story. Examples cited:
1. UK blogger Kevin Anderson for the Guardian who gained knowledge of the war in Iraq from Iraqi bloggers who shared their local knowledge that he used in analysis/commentary.
2. Greg Barns wrote commentary and analysis about the recent Haneef case for Crikey based upon the changing events almost hourly based upon of the news reporting by Hedley Thomas for The Australian. Bloggers and journalist working together to do a different job.

With online you no longer have to wait until the next day for commentary to interpret the news. But newspapers can save themselves by morphing into daily magazine like Viewspapers. Example cited was The Independent in the UK.

Radio + TV (will be ok because of its immediacy and portability)
Newspapers (national - ok)
Newspapers (local suburbans - ok because they focus on specific local issues)
Newspapers (statewide masterheads - stuffed because they have little to no relevance)

With online, Australia is very much behind US and UK with high quality and highly read new media publications. Branding matters and online is still dominated by the traditional media (News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC).

Issues it raises
How to fund new media enterprises that can do quality reporting, investigations and commentary?
- Free to air (rely on audience size to sell advertising)
- Pay per view (subscriptions, magazines and books)
- Gift economy (time like wikipedia or $$$ donations/philanthropy)

How do new media properties create a brand to compete with the power and reach of the existing media?

How can the audience trust what they read online?

With the Internet politicians are now going over the head of the media and direct to the audience. Will it create more partisan news and commentary in the media so they can attract a specific audience?

What role will the likes of Google and other services aggregating the news have?