03.15.2010 at 10:05 am | Have your say »

Media conference on citizen journalism opens

Scheduled to take place on Thursday, March 18, 2010 in Berlin, Germany, the conference aims at exploring opportunities available in the new media for both traditional and citizens’ newspapers. It is organized by the International Institute for Journalism (IIJ) of InWEnt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

Discussion will center on how citizen journalism innovates the media, both in industrialized and developing countries. One topic that is, however, expected to generate some debate is whether or not media ethics should be renewed.

From Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States of America, these experts will gather at the FAZ’s Atrium, Mittelstraße 2-4, 10117 Berlin (Mitte) from 9:30 a.m and hopefully resolve some of the questions surrounding this issue.

Third conference in a series

Astrid Kohl, Head of the International Institute for Journalism (IIJ)

The conference, the third in the series is under the theme “At a tipping point: Community voices create the difference, how mutual journalism innovates the news”. The concept of this conference as well as of the conferences that were held in 2009 and 2008 has been developed by Astrid Kohl, director of the IIJ. The main idea is to foster the exchange between media houses in the developed and in the developing world by discussing trends that are defining the future structure of the media landscape worldwide. In the course of the years the conference has proved to be a forum both for knowledge sharing and for networking.

The traditional media has lost some control on news.  It is inevitable for people who wish to report and upload pictures to do so, even for well established media organizations like the BBC, the CNN and the New York Times.

In CNN’s IReport website for instance, citizen reporters post videos, pictures and stories of events they find newsworthy. It is evident that CNN created the website to keep its community of citizen reporters faithful to the brand, while not necessarily promising that the content will be used by them right away.

Community journalism – a threat?

Community journalism, though fairly new, is threatening to bring some traditional media unto their knees with a few already recording less advertisement and reduction in sales of their newspapers.

In spite of the ensuing impact on some of these traditional papers, there are still doubts about the capacity and impact that CJ can have on the global media landscape, hence the conference.

The conference, therefore, hopes to explore the opportunities available to traditional newspapers to incorporate the new media into their work because until now, most journalist still view the emergence of these amateur reporters as an annoyance.

Citizen journalism as they are collectively called has the main advantage of being at the right place at the right time. They help online news site deliver news faster by submitting texts, pictures or even videos of events as they happen.

The products of such news gathering and reporting is then called user-generated content.

Keynote speaker from Global Voices and Grocott’s Mail

Topics to be discussed at this year’s conference include “Focusing on countries outside of Europe and North America USA” to be delivered by Solana Larsen, the Managing Editor of Global Voices.

Global Voices is a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring readers translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. It is a non-profit organization and incorporated in the Netherlands as Stichting Global Voices.

Steven Lang, the Editor-in-Chief of Grocott’s Mail in Grahamstown in South Africa will also speak. His topic is on trend setting in citizen journalism.

The Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism Newsroom was opened on September, 8 2009. It is a walk-in community facility where citizens of Grahamstown can produce their own journalistic content (written stories accompanied with photographs, for example).

10 computers for citizen reporters

The Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism newsroom consists of 10 computers, equipped with four USB data cables (compatible with Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson cell phones), three Bluetooth dongles and three card readers to facilitate the transfer of photos and videos from a variety of cell phones and digital cameras onto the computers.

The Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism Newsroom is also used as a centre to train citizens of Grahamstown in order to better equip them with the knowledge and skills they will need to produce their own content.

A six member panel is also scheduled to lead a discussion on the topic which will be hosted by Sigrun Rottmann, of the BBC World Service Radio.

The Managing Director of the FAZ, Dr. Roland Gerschermann and the Chief Executive Officer of InWEnt, Dr. Sebastian Paust will welcome the delegates. Dr. Hans-Jurgen Beerfeltz, the State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is scheduled to give the opening address.

The InWent International Media Conference started three years ago. The first one held in 2008 was based on the theme: “Online Journalism: Opportunities and Challenges for Press Freedom” while last year’s forum addressed how new media can be used during election times under the topic: “Elections Time: Harnessing the Power of New Media.”

By: News Team (Naa Lamiley Bentil & Sheilla Sackey)

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