03.09.2010 at 4:55 pm | Have your say »

Traditional journalism is true journalism – GAZ

Germany’s Gießen-based traditional newspaper Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung believes that journalism done by professional people is better than the citizen journalists.

“It is better in terms of quality,” says Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung deputy editor-in-chief Burkhard Bräuning.

The newspaper, which came out in 1946 as Gießener Freie Presse and was renamed as Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung in 1960s, thinks that among the advantages of professional journalism is that journalists devote their time in working for their stories.

Bräuning says traditional journalism is reliable, is the true journalism and with reliability as its soul.

Strict on citizen journalism

GAZ, which has 60 editor-cum-reporters and has many freelance journalists, is very strict on citizen journalism.

The deputy editor-in-chief says they do not have citizen journalists because “we do not really care about user generated contents (UGC) to (be) print(ed) in our newspaper.”

“It is not necessarily journalism. This (use of UGC) is a different way of story telling but it is not true journalism,” he points out.

GAZ has a circulation of about 60 thousand copies from Monday to Saturday and above 90 percent of the paper are subscribed by the readers. “The subscribers buy our newspaper because we are reliable. So, we cannot provide them any news done by amateur journalists,” says Bräuning.

Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung deputy editor-in-chief Burkhard Bräuning. - Photo by Petrus Damar Harsanto

He further adds “citizen journalists might have fact mistakes (so) we cannot rely on them. We should not sell lower quality news to the readers.”

Bräuning says a citizen journalist can provide a good story like when he personally sees an accident and there is no professional journalist around but stressed that quality is still the biggest advantage of professional or traditional journalists.

Quality journalism is necessary

GAZ believes that quality is very important for the existence of journalism.

“For example, an expert of dog racing can give you a better article than us but this is not news. This is not journalism. Filtering between information and true news can be done by professional journalists,” defends the deputy editor-in-chief.

On the other hand, Germany’s first UGC-based newspaper, Gießener Zeitung, established in 2008 in Gießen, has been enjoying its popularity among its users as well as advertisers.

The newspaper comes out on Wednesdays and Saturdays, has four local editions and is distributed for free to approximately 125,000 households in the city and surrounding areas.

Is citizen journalism a threat?

In citizen journalism, the people source and write the stories and provide the photos and videos to the newspaper for free.

Most professional journalists reject citizen journalism saying they (citizen journalists) produce low-quality news.

However, this sort of journalism is gradually earning popularity among the younger generations across the world.

When asked about the prospect of citizen journalism in GAZ, Bräuning says they are incorporating UGC only in their online newspaper version and not to the print version.

A man reads Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung in a video slide ad of the newspaper. - Photo by Petrus Damar Harsanto

He explains that “the younger generation is growing up with the internet. They want to contribute news on a website. If we try to block them out we will loose the whole generation.”

“Traditional quality journalism, in my opinion, will not be replaced by user generated contents,” he says.

He admits that in certain aspects citizen journalists can become a threat to traditional journalists since the former might give more information to readers than the traditional journalists.

He, however, does not consider Gießener Zeitung’s gradual popularity among readers and advertisers as a threat to GAZ’s existence since “our readers are always with us.”

“They (our readers) are our strength. They prefer reliable news. They want to see the paper (GAZ) at their houses in the morning,” he says.

He adds that traditional journalists are still hopeful because recent statistics have shown that newspaper is the most trusted medium in Germany.

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