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Latin American Media tour the Heart of the Eurozone
For two days in June 2009 Portuguese and Spanish voices from the New World could be heard in the corridors of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. Business and financial journalists from across Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Costa ruca, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, to name but a few) were invited by the European Journalism Centre and European Commission’s Directorate-General Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN).
The EJC group spent two intense days being briefed by ECB high-ranking officials on the financial architecture of the European Union and on the global role of the euro.
The invited reporters had the chance to meet specialised reporters from Europe and from Asia. All were there with the aim of attending, live, the press news conference in which ECB’s President, Jean-Claude Trichet, announced new measures and concerted action to tackle the economic and financial crisis in Europe.
Two extended meetings with President Trichet and a member of the Executive Board, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, were the highlights of the visit. Both hosts spoke frankly with the visitors, whose curiosity translated into multiple, technical, questions, probing Europe’s response to the crisis.
Most were surprised to discover that all EU Member States are part of Economic and Monetary Union, which means they coordinate their economic policies for the benefit of the Union as whole. However, not all of them are in the euro area – only those having adopted the European single currency are indeed members.
At several policy briefings, the invited journalists were given extensive information about the framework ruling the economies and public finances of EU Member States.
Posted on June 25, 2009 by .
Filed under events.
Th!nk About It finale on Cover It Live
The EJC is blogging live from the Th!nk About It finale in Rotterdam.
Th!nk About It is a blogging competition among a community of young politics junkies from around Europe who have been blogging for four months about the European Parliament elections of June, 2009.
At least two bloggers from each of the 27 member states were asked to participate in the competition.
Join us on Cover It Live to follow the Th!nk buzz.
Posted on June 15, 2009 by .
Filed under blogging.
The trouble with localisation on the world wide web
Google makes money with advertising. So why doesn’t your news site?
The engineer who co-founded the communications protocols for the Internet said Monday that he doesn’t know.
“Young people don’t pay for Gmail or Google Docs,” Vint Cerf said. He is responsible for enabling new technologies on the Internet for Google.
“They basically get all that for free. … And people pay us to present their ads. The model seems to work for us. So why isn’t it working for journalists?”
Speaking in front of 200 participants at The Sixth Conference on Innovation Journalism, Cerf (on right) talked about journalism’s failure to make money with advertising on the platform he helped enable during the 1970s.
His keynote, which followed IJ-6 host David Nordfors’ welcoming remarks at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, also touched on the immediacy the Internet fosters.
In a brief “engineer’s history of mass media”, Cerf linked the proliferation of powerful one-way mediums like radio and television with the (still) rising importance of local audience.
“That was an important property because advertisers can take advantage of locality. Advertisers want to reach an audience they care about,” he said.
Terrestrial radio advertisers in particular must target their ads at to the geographic location of their audience. Indeed, in times of economic stability, print and broadcast journalism has been able to make money with demographically specific advertising.
But when a news product has a potentially global audience, as it does on the Internet, it’s hard to know whom the advertisements would be for, Cerf said. This problem must be solved.
“The journalism of the future has to lay in an advertising model,” he said.
Perhaps advertisers and content creators have not yet fully adapted to the personal, targeted nature of the Internet.
This individualised experience of a medium that transcends time and space presents a great deal of immediacy for advertisers and journalists.
Consumers of journalistic output are in a position to act instantly, in real time.
Transactions (financial and otherwise) can happen within the medium of the Internet, unlike mediums like magazines. Book lovers, for example, can purchase or download titles online.
That said, perhaps the role of journalists could (should?) be to increase transactions online.
“The immediacy and opportunity to do something with the information you’re getting places opportunity on shoulders of the journalist,” Cerf said.
Posted on May 19, 2009 by .
Filed under events.
Nuevos Medios!—Youth and New European Media
Erratum: The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a mistake in the latest newsletter, which slipped out quietly but effectively to thousands of subscribers on 6 May.
In the headlines, we mention how “EJC Director Wilfried Ruetten joins a round table on 8 May at the ‘Youth and New European Media’ conference in Valencia, Spain. With the European Elections just two months away, he’ll talk about communicating Europe - and how much new media can help.”
Clearly, this should have been updated from the April newsletter and should have read “just ONE month away from the European elections...”. Our thanks to Mikael Carpelan for being the first to notice. Several thousand apologies are therefore in order! HH
Posted on May 6, 2009 by .
Filed under announcements.
Thinking about press freedom from the current Capital of Europe
I was in Prague during the Czech EU Presidency last month and was struck by some off-the-cuff remarks made by a city official to a group of international journalists during a discussion on the role of the press.
The official said politicians and journalists need each other, that journalists rely on politics for a good source of its news and ‘product’, and forcefully stated that the role of responsible media is to keep an eye on the politicians.
But instead of continuing on with the press freedom banter, the comments ended with a thrust back into pre-Velvet Revolution Prague when the official added that politicians need to keep an eye on the journalists as well.
What did that mean and where did it come from? What happened that prompted the official - in fact a former journalist - to say that? What did it say about press freedom when someone who understands both sides of the politics/media equation has concluded that journalists need to be watched?
I thought about this for days - and came to the conclusion that what is happening now in a lot of former communist country media markets
is a frustration with the down-marketing of journalism as a profession, a craft, and a form of communication that even awards prizes to itself.
The comment illustrated frustration from above, and from below reflected sloppiness and a lack of self-regulation, even pride, on the part of journalists here and in Warsaw, Budapest and other cities that thought Western foreign investment into local media was the key to raising salaries and thus journalistic professionalism. Instead it seems to have made the bottom line a daily reality for editors in order to appeal to as many readers as they possibly can, sacrificing well-researched stories for the sake of a few more readers to get those numbers up for the quickly disappearing advertisers.
While politicians in this part of the world have been known - even recently - to keep their eyes on journalists, it was more from the fear of stories that opened up questions of corruption and other kinds of scandals. However these days more enlightened politicians seem to be worried that journalists are not only getting the facts wrong but also focusing on the wrong facts, that they are not doing their job inside a functioning democracy.
Should the market sort it all out? Media self regulation and press councils can go someway to putting pressure on sensational journalism, but the pressure for mass appeal journalism is even stronger.
I would like to say that this is a black and white issue: press freedom means being allowed to write just about anything about anyone. Whoever questions that (like my Czech official) is part of the censorship brigade. But now with the influx of bloggers and citizen journalists the role of the professional journalist is even more important; that well researched, relevant and factual journalism should not give political, business and society’s leaders pause over questions of quality. Self-regulation should come from a source of pride journalists should have in their profession.
So if Czech politicians are watching their journalists and mentally editing their stories these days, they will have a lot of homework to do. Probably too much to take some time to reflect on Press Freedom Day this year.
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Flickr image from user Giorgio Montersino
Posted on May 4, 2009 by .
Filed under development.
InJo continues to grow
The concept of Innovation Journalism is blooming brighter than ever this spring, thanks in part to the EJC’s successful Interfacing Innovation event in Brussels.
Ideas will continue to germinate this month in Palo Alto, California, at the Sixth Conference on Innovation Journalism.
It’s a bargain of an event, tailored for today’s journalist in every way. It’s free to attend: the $150 booking fee is refunded to participants upon their arrival at the conference on 18 May.
One of Google’s vice presidents, Vince Cerf (often introduced as the Father of the Internet) will headline the three-day event talking about the future economy and technology of journalism.
Several mainstage panels will be held on offshoot topics. A bouquet of smaller best-practice workshops arranged by this year’s class of Innovation Journalism Fellows follow. The fellows, midcareer journalists from Sweden, Pakistan, Slovenia and Mexico, have spent their past months working for an innovation-related publication in the United States.
Each journalist is responsible for leading two sessions, to which they have each invited extra panelists from around the US.
Check out the conference website here.
Posted on May 1, 2009 by .
Filed under events.
We came, we saw, we reunited
English presenter and political commentator Chris Hickman tells the story of a group of journalists who met at an EJC conference in 2005, what happened when things went wrong, and the long-term bond that formed between them.
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I didn’t get it at first. It took one of the girls, either Gusti, Nici or Niina to turn on the light. But that can wait. Let me first explain who we are and how we came to meet.
Back in June 2005 I went to Brussels for an EJC Conference. At the time I was working as an English presenter and political commentator for a local TV station in Cyprus. I am a UK journalist living and working there. The conference was on Common Agricultural Policy with particular regard to Poland, a late-comer to the EU party. The chance to visit Warsaw and see some of the magnificent Polish countryside was irresistible.
There were of course groups from here there and everywhere, Lithuania, Greece, Spain, etc. I was travelling with a Cypriot newsman, Georgios Michael, who doubled as my cameraman on this occasion.
Not too much caught my attention in Brussels amid the acres of glass and forests of bulletin sheets produced for people just like me. When it came to our departure for Warsaw I found the airport depressing and the catering worse. But then something extraordinary began to happen.
One of our party from Thessaloniki wasn’t allowed on the plane. There was something amiss with the dots in his passport. The rest of the Greek contingent was incensed. They were Athenian and didn’t know him, but there was a certain amount of national pride at stake here. The protests became voluble. Eventually the Greeks were persuaded to return to their seats and the flight left minus one. The authorities had him by the dots.
Something happened then. A unity began to ferment among us. We were journalists facing adversity. One of our number was missing. And despite the fact that he was released later that day and joined us late into our first entré to Polish culture and cuisine, we had become more of a unit than I could previously have imagined.
The following days after concluding various meetings with bigwigs relevant to our topic, we motley band of journalists escaped into Warsaw to explore. We eventually found ourselves enjoying refreshment in the beautifully restored old quarter of the city. At my table were: Nici Asmuth (Germany), Michael Giordiades (Cyprus), Niina Jokiaho (Finland) and Augustine Woess (Austria).
Our conversation ranged from matters EU to personal, and the experience was so rewarding that one of us – and the feeling was so unanimous that I can’t say whose suggestion it was – proposed that we should meet up again – a reunion of sorts. And we were as good as our word. In October that year we spent a week together in Cyprus.
January 2006 we travelled to Helsinki and then moved on to Rovaniemi in Lapland to meet the World’s greatest ambassador of peace, Santa Claus. Even I, cynical journo’ that I am, felt the frisson of a ten-year-old as he turned to me, peered over his spectacles and said, “I haven’t seen you in a long time”. I found myself stumbling for my reply. “No Santa,” I blurted.
Subsequently our Group has revisited Cyprus. Another year we enjoyed the luxury of Vienna and last year the charm of Bietigheim near Stuttgart. From everywhere we have steeped ourselves in the local culture, each of us acting country by country as guide and interpreter. We have picked up some history, enjoyed the food and wine, shared our ideas, shopped, etc. We had a political discussion on TV in Cyprus and enjoyed a tour of the Finnish Parliament led by one of its members. We have produced several small hardback books with photographs and text documenting our exploits.
What’s more we are in frequent contact with each other. For example when Augustine needs to know more about education in Finland, who is she going to phone first? If I want to know about travel magazines in countries other than my own, what is my first point of reference?
So to return to my opening. I realised I had made friends, but I didn’t see at first how much more than friends we were. We have managed to fulfil and exceed the mission statement of the EJC. All mission statements list ideals some of which are lofty and others practical. We achieved a concord that transcended national boundaries. The EJC had worked a better trick than its founders might have imagined.
We have established a forum for discussion, debate, exchanges of views and experience, and we have created a support network among ourselves. More than that, we have a bond of friendship that I believe is insoluble. For that alone I owe the EJC my deepest thanks.
The Warsaw Reunion Group are:
• Nicole Asmuth, Stuttgart, Germany – Internet news and sports editor.
• Chris Hickman, Paphos, Cyprus (& UK) freelance journalist, writer and presenter.
• Niina Jokiaho, Helsinki, Finland – YLE TV.
• Augustine Woess, Vienna, Austria – ORF 3sat.
And occasionally:
• Giorgios Michael, Cyprus - TV reporter and presenter.
• Cherry Dobbins, Cyprus – food writer.
(End)
Posted on April 28, 2009 by .
Filed under blogging.
DNA2009: Considering media, Aristotle and tragedy
EJC associate producer Bernd Kapeller reflects on a recent event
Reflecting on the DNA2009 seminar of last month, I am reminded of Aristotle’s definition of a tragedy. The moment when the hero comes face to face with his true identity is a mechanism transforming not only the hero, but the story itself.Forced (or blessed) by Anagnorisis, a Greek concept for “discovery”, which inevitably led to Peripeteia - the Greek literary meaning for the “transition from ignorance to knowledge” - our hero, the media, finds itself in an identity crisis.
At the core is a paradox so obvious it cannot be ignored by the conscious mind of our hero.
The discovery that there is no viable and sustainable business model for “news” in a purely digital environment, pared with the inevitability NOT to embrace and domesticate this very same environment, is the basic paradox inherent in all debates about the “future of the industry”.
To solve this paradox, reason is mixed with the urge to act. The instinct for survival and institutional and professional self-preservation in turn leads to a quest for identity among its members.
Does technology drive innovation or do inventions foster technology? Do media shape society or society media? Are citizen journalists or journalists citizens?
Readers become suddenly producers. Journalists become marketers. Newspapers become community managers. Broadcasters (public or private) transform to multiple service and platform providers. Large publishers look for ways to exploit the local and hyper-locality within their national or global markets.
Nothing stays the same. Nothing promises stability or even growth. In this constant flux, the battle for stable identities is fought on waxed ground.
So, what is the solution?
What is the solution to the tragedy playing out on the stages of DNA2009 – and at every other media event in the West, for that matter? In fact ... there is no solution.
For Aristotle, the hero in a tragedy does not stay the same nor does the story. In movies, the moment when Bruce Willis, in the Sixth Sense, after spending the whole movie trying to help the little kid who sees dead people, comes to the realisation that he is dead - and bang… peripeteia… did not change. He just realised he is dead.
Examine Neo in the movie The Matrix when he comes to understand that his life is a computer program. After the hero made the transition from ignorance to knowledge, the world around him has changed so profoundly that whatever he thought was right or wrong was nothing more than a computer program.
At DNA2009, Michael Rosenblum got it right when he compared the heros in today’s media scene to zombies when he said: “They are walking dead, they just haven’t realised it yet”.
And that is why I am going to interview him next year as well.
The food was not good at this Brussels event. The tickets are too expensive. Nothing really new from the big players in the field.
Have a look on the DNA2009 article by Howard Hudson and the interview I did with Nigel Baker.
Posted on March 26, 2009 by .
Filed under .
Media and poverty reduction: Challenges and opportunities
EJC associate producer Bernd Kapeller returns to Maastricht after a week in Prague
I am now back from Prague where I had no time to see a single movie shown at the One World Film Festival 2009. Instead, I showcase here the full panel discussion which took place in the Goethe Institute on 18 March. The panel was held in English with simultaneous interpretation into Czech.
Posted on March 25, 2009 by .
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