First of all big thanks to Solana for taking this matter to an international level, that’s main problem with being Danish online – a language that only we ourselves understand :-)

As I wrote in my post (which Solana linked to), I see a tendency where bloggers and grass root media pick up a story and then the “big media” or “old media” picks it up and carries it on.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Actually I think it’s a good thing. Mainly because both “sides” benefit from this.

Bloggers and grass roots show their strengths: Looking across the world (both on- and offline) for cases, situations and wrong-doings that might be worth a story. Of course it’s not always negative stories, but let’s face it — a lot of stories take off because someone notices injustice somewhere.

They then post this story to show that they are in disagreement with what has happened.

If the story is big enough, or has another certain impact, it may get picked up by “big media”, and now the “big guns” can show their strengs:

A big audience and an ability to get people to talk, when they call them. This can bring the story to a larger crowd of people and move the story on.

I too question whether or not a person would “bother” answering questions from a non-media person — but just let me stress, that I think they should :-)

But then again: Why shouln’t bloggers and others try to get the points of view from the persons in question? As we say in Danish: “The worst you can get is a no”.

I for one would like to see, what would happen then. Would the media quote the blog (which they are not always very good at, at least here in Denmark) or would they pick of the phone and call the person themselves? Well, I guess we just have to wait and see.

I didn’t mean to downplay the role of bloggers and grass roots in my post. Yes, I’m a journalist of education (working as a project manager) and some in the Danish corner of the blogosphere a journalists — if it’s “many” I won’t start to define, since “many” is a size varying from person to person.

I am not sure how me being a journalist could be a “flaw”, regarding my post? Please clarify on that and I will reply :-)

All the best — and thanks again for raising this to the non-Danish realm of the web :-)
// Lars

Thanks.

of course, we cannot generalize and in some parts of the world *it does happen* that random people can talk with editors and even have their stories published in printed or online edition (not just their comments) – it’s not so rare in US newspapers, for example –

so we’d always try to bridge and foster collaboration between old & new media – but in this context the accusation against bloggers because they “didn’t move the story forward” is just a smoke screen – like the attitude of most old media/journalists in italy – a bad faith proposition, a trap we’d be careful not to fall into

Agree that there are numerous pre-blogging examples of “old media” engaging with ordinary citizens and using them as a source of info, e.g. the eyewitness report, the “vox pop”/”man-in-the-street” interview, the person who calls into the media outlet to report what s/he just saw, etc. What “old media” rails against, of course, is the fact that these ordinary citizens can now publish this information themselves, encroaching on old media territory and, in some cases, scooping old media or generally making life difficult.

Either way, interesting story, and happy to hear about what’s going on in the land of open sandwiches and frikadelle. :)

The only flaw in Jensen’s critique is that many of the bloggers who are most active in the Danish blogosphere are actually journalists themselves (including himself). Is the same true in Trinidad?

It’s almost as though you wear different hats; sometimes a blogger other times a journalist. In which case, you might ask – does blogging make journalists better at their work? At least you take the long view and look at the media from the outside (which you rarely do when you’re stuck in the thick of it). But if no one takes it upon themselves to “move the story forward” as he says, it makes no difference.

So perhaps this is more of a human characteristic than a characteristic of the blogosphere. After all, there are just as many endless examples of “old media” not following up on important stories. At least the tension between old and new media can draw out the time period between the break of a story, until someone finally just decides to do something about it :-)

It’s certainly a good sign if bloggers are asking more and more, is there anything I could have done?

We see stories on Global Voices all the time, where individual bloggers decide to make a cause their business and rally others to support them. It doesn’t mean that everybody does it, but it’s certainly reaffirms that it’s possible – anywhere in the world.

Jensen’s observations are similar to one made recently by a journalist friend of mine with regard to a story about a journalist who was dismissed from his job at a newspaper here in Trinidad, allegedly because he wrote things his editor (and who knows who else?) didn’t like. “How many of you called the paper to get the newspaper’s side of the story??” asked my indignant journalist friend of the people (myself included) and others who were commenting on the issue on blogs, Facebook etc.

I responded by asking whether she thought a newspaper editor in Trinidad would deign to give information to somebody identifying themselves as a blogger. My hunch is that the editor wouldn’t. Or even if he/she did, he/she would give a canned response.

Which is not to condone the behaviour of people who claim to have a total grasp of a story when they obviously don’t. But Jensen’s reading of the dynamic that seems to be developing between traditional journalism and citizen media in certain markets seems right.