Tweets, Elites And The Same Old News Agenda November 3, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Journalism, Social media.Tags: Twitter
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Has new media reinvigorated democracy or throttled good journalism, asks Dr Natalie Fenton in her forthcoming book ‘New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in a Digital Age’.
And her answer? Well, the clue is in the title.
The book is not quite a pessimist’s charter, but nor does it side with the ‘utopian vision [of] everyone connected to everyone else, a non-hierarchical network of voices with equal, open and global access.’
Fenton and her team of researchers at Goldsmiths make two key observations. Firstly, that the mechanics of the journalist’s trade is suffering because of the desk-bound demands of new media – ‘iron cages’, they call them.
Secondly, new media rarely means new voices on the national stage because the ‘economics of news remains stacked against the newcomer’.
Continue reading: Tweets, elites and the same old news agenda on Journalism.co.uk
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By the sound of it, this book is hitting a few nails on the head. Much of the focus today in journalism has moved from finding original stories to an obsession with the latest technology, whether it’s Twitter or Google Wave. New technology are simple tools. What’s at the heart of real journalism is not Tweeting but finding good stories that no one else has. Sadly, many journalists today are indeed locked in “iron cages”, forced to turn out more content to meet online demands instead of getting out onto the streets and talking to people.
[...] Tweets, Elites And The Same Old News Agenda Has new media reinvigorated democracy or throttled good journalism? [jonbernstein.wordpress.com] (tags: Digital_media BBC The_Guardian Manchester_Evening_News Natalie_Fenton Twitter) [...]