REPORT FROM ONO’S 2008 CONFERENCE IN STOCKHOLM
Friday, May 30, 2008
Day 2 of the annual ONO conference in Stockholm began with a bang, and three speakers who talked about how today’s challenges in the news business (on all platforms) will shape and transform the ways newsrooms and ombuds operate tomorrow.
We will continue to post their full remarks, or links to Web sites that give you more information about them, as the day progresses. For now, a recap:
– Jane Singer, University of Central Lancashire/University of Iowa, spoke of “Norms and the Network: Journalism Ethics in a Shared Media Space.”
Main points included how immediacy, interactivity and interconnections are bringing about ethical adaptations to this cyber universe of shared space and shared control, in which journalists and newspeople are not gate-keepers but are “sense-makers” and collaborators in this raucous information-news environment.
Singer also raised questions about how the concept of objectivity is getting another look in this new universe in which no story is finite or final, and no story is an island. The ‘net also is bringing about “the collapse of distance” between news provider and news consumer (indeed, how even those terms are getting a workover) because “isolation has no value” in the Internet.
She brought up other issues that we ombuds (and everyone else in the news business) deals with, especially user-generated comment and concerns (“all rights and no responsibilities” for users) about credibility and civility issues involved in that.
Bottom line: The radically evolving media landscape provides fertile ground for ombudsmen when it comes to transparency, discourse, ethics and relationships with users.
Please check back later to see her full comments.
– Joakim Jardenberg, one of the owners of the Swedish media entrepreneur group called Mindpark, works with news organizations, including newspapers, to make the transition to other platforms. One of his precepts: “Content isn’t king, conversation is … and content is just the stuff we talk about … and we cannot and should not stop the conversation.”
Ombuds were created when there was more distance between reader/viewer and newspeople, and someone was needed to put his-her ear to the ground and convey the conversation, he said. Now that that distance has collapsed, and that all of us live among “the crowd,” ombuds need to re-think how they do their work. “We don’t own the story or the crowd,” he said.
Jardenberg told the ombuds that “credibility without relevance means nothing” and that one of the things ombuds need to do is act as community managers, and to work as the “internal evangelist” to encourage news staff to join the conversations going on about their work.
Final thought: “We must move closer to the audience, or perish. Set sail, not anchor.”
Visit his Web site at http://mindpark.se. (You should be able to have the site, in Swedish, translated into English.)
– Ed Wasserman, Knight Professor in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., spoke about ethics and the news business and new threats to journalism retaining its”soul” as the business morphs along with technology and audience.
He touched on five main areas: “verticality” and how technology drives segmentation of news material and advertising, and what that might mean to the greater missions of journalism; internet advertising and the implications on user privacy and surveillance, and potential conflicts of interest; convergence, and its potential to encourage trivialization of news; the search for new revenues to replace advertising, and how the search for deep pockets and the backing of individuals or groups and foundations with strings attached could comprise journalism; and how the use of producers of content who are not full-time journalists also pose conflicts and issues — and how all those factors could erode the trust that is most important to the relationship we as newspeople have with our readers, viewers, audience or “crowd.”
Please return later for Wasserman’s full remarks.
Gotta run … another session is starting.
Pam Platt, representing The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., USA, and president of ONO
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Hello from Stockholm, where it doesn’t get dark until midnight and the sun’s up by 4 a.m. and ombudsmen never sleep.
Well, almost never.
This blog comes at the end of a good, full and long day (I’m writing this after midnight, Sweden time) of great information from academics and professionals, of several productive sessions of shop talk, of a breathtaking cruise through the archipelago of islands that make up Stockholm.
Wifi problems kept me from filing this earlier, but with all the video from Sweden’s TV4 and the prepared remarks by speakers that we are posting on the site, you don’t need to hear much from me.
But I will say a couple of things:
The international nature of the Organization of News Ombudsmen is one of its greatest assets. It is inspiring to meet and talk with people from around the world who are committed to a free and fair press and who advocate for the reader, viewer, user or consumer. We come from different places but there are great common denominators to what we do, and what we encounter on the job.
On the site, you’ll find studies conducted by people from Australia, Denmark, Switzerland and The Netherlands. Tomorrow, you find even more posts by people from even more countries.
That diversity mirrors that of our delegates. Elsewhere on the site, you can take a look at who our members are, where they are from and which media outlets they represent.
To members who could not be here, we miss you – and we hope that the video and posted remarks give you a good and real sense of what is happening here.
To visitors who are not ONO members, welcome. We hope you enjoy what you see and what you read, and that you’ll come back to read more dispatches from our conference in Stockholm and – more importantly – the work from news ombudsmen throughout the world whose work we post every week on the ONO site.
Until tomorrow (or later today!) ……
Pam Platt, representing The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., USA, and president of ONO
