John Hartigan, chief of News Corp Australian office went on the attack today. It might be just me, but the whole thing reeks of the newspaper ship sinking and an angry captain not making any sense. From Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr:
Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications. Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance. JOHN HARTIGAN
It’s an interesting rant and quite the opposite to Rupert Murdochs stated position regarding the importance of social media. Though probably in line with Paywalls-R-Us, the last (?) ditch attempt to monetize heritage news articles.
It might be worth changing the terms “blogs” and “social media” to a new one: “community media”. Because everytime newspapers attack their former readership they alienate the community. And newspapers are supposed to be serving the community – not advertisers, not sponsors, not fat cat executives but the community. News does not come out of the air, nor formed from the vacuum in the mind of a journalist or an editor but out of the community, to be clarified and filtered and passed back to the community. Don’t get the community too miffed!
Anyway Hartigan’s comments and Duncan’s response is worth a good read. It highlights most of the perceptions/misconceptions facing everyday Australians that write, communicate, collaborate, make and share videos, read blogs – yes YOU! – and chat with family on Facebook and politicians on Twitter.
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