[...] discussão, no lado britânico, vai andando, com contributos de Shane Richmond (Daily Telegraph) ou Neil McIntosh (Guardian). Sou só eu, ou mais alguém tem a sensação de que, por cá, independentemente do que [...]

[...] Journalist magazine finally arrived at Tosh Towers, and its convergence coverage was broadly as bad as expected. Those expectations were already low thanks to the vigorous fiskings provided by the [...]

[...] succeed, partly in an attempt to enact some basic changes at the NUJ using a method other than arguing online with Donnacha DeLong (setting up a form based online application system, publishing The Journalist [...]

[...] both as we try to work out if the union has actually managed to get is act together since it caused such disquiet with some initial findings earlier in the [...]

Mine arrived this morning, with the headline ‘Digital Jungle: Union looks for the way through’. I haven’t yet taken the wrapper off yet, but I can imagine what I’m going to read…

Here’s the thing, though: isn’t the union supposed to represent its members interests, not dictate them? In that regard, surely it wouldn’t be hypocritical to remain a member, provided those of us who are who don’t agree with its direction can effect any kind of change in a better direction.

Stay in the union. Journalists have never needed it more, given the upheaval in the news industry and the economic squeezes ahead. More importantly, the union has never needed more the involvement of people who actually “get it”. Having said that, I’ve tried to get involved in the new media side of the NUJ and always got the brush-off.

I am very interested in this debate. I am employed by the NUJ as the Broadcasting Organiser. There is a very real debate within the union around the issues of covergence and web 2.0. People are perhaps making the assumption that the editor of the Journalist or one NEC member represents the view of the NUJ. This is not the case. In the broadcasting sector we have been dealing with these issues for many years. We take a responsible and hopefully an informed view of the issues whilst correctly standing up for members and their terms and conditions. We make no apologies for that as whatever technology is in use, members should be able to adapt and have some control over what happens to them in this environment. Please consider dealing with these issues inside the NUJ- the Union will only have good policies if the people who care about the industry and engaged wihtin it.

Hmmm, isn’t it funny when you do a major survey of membership to find out what they think and then do some work putting it together in a report, you get accused of dictating. Strange that.

As regards my piece, it was an opinion piece, just like Neil’s is above. He’s entitled to his opinion as much as I’m entitled to mine. Of course, Neil does miss a very important word when he claims that I started with a strawman - I didn’t say that Web 2.0 replaces traitional media, I said “how it’s seen as replacing traditional media”. That’s a very important distinction that, in my view, changes it from a strawman to a reflection of the situation too many of our members face - quality goes out the window as managers and proprietors think that any old rubbish will do, because there is a view that Web 2.0 will replace traditional media (and in the latter I include quality websites).

Bobbie, firstly, I’m a Senior Website Editor. In my time, I’ve taken still photographs, acted as producer for a camera crew, I write features, news, sub copy, write headline, do interviews, edit audio, crop pictures, design web pages… do I need to go on? My article is about how people are using Web 2.0 to attack professional journalism - newspaper owners who think that any old rubbish can go online and that their journalists aren’t important. Newspaper owners who think they can cut capacity to the bone, destroy quality and it doesn’t matter because we’re all in Web 2.0 land where a crappy piece of video filmed on a camera phone and posted on Youtube is worthy content! Neil links to Roy Greenslade’s article, well let me quote a key phrase:
“We are surely moving towards a situation in which relatively small “core” staffs will process material from freelances and/or citizen journalists, bloggers, whatever (and there are many who think this business of “processing” will itself gradually disappear too in an era of what we might call an unmediated media).”
Isn’t that exactly what my article says people are saying? Is that the media you want to see - with no staff and content from anyone without any “processors” (they’re normally known in the business as reporters and sub-editors).

The union isn’t against Citizen Journalists and that’s why we used the term “witness contributor” for a specific group of people (it’s now generally referred to as user-generated content). People posting on their blogs, putting their images on Flickr, putting video on Youtube - not the issue. Newspapers taking in UGC without paying for it, grabbing the copyright without concern for the safety of the people taking the phtoos, etc. is the problem. I’d like to remind Neil, as I did at the time, that the Code was for media outlets, not citizen journalists, and it was our recommendations on how UGC should be dealt with by those outlets. I will also point out that quite a few of our recommendations were subsequently adopted by broadcasters - http://www.guardian.co.uk/medi.....asting.bbc .

Donnacha - even those of us who think the citizen journalism movement was mostly far-fetched were disturbed by the line the NUJ took on user participation. It wasn’t widely rated as a victory, whoever it was aimed at.

So I’m very interested by your last sentence, because it suggests more widespread adoption and acceptance than any of us ever knew of. I didn’t think the BBC’s decision to pay in some cases had anything to do with the NUJ’s position - after all, ITV have paid contributors to You’ve Been Framed for years. So which broadcasters, and which recommendations?

Oh Donnacha, the whole thing was about protecting a particular kind of professional journalism, and what you perceive to the interests of your membership.

But you’re trying to restart an 18 month-old argument when you haven’t got round to answering my original question of yesterday, which was around your very specific claim: which broadcasters adopted which recommendations?

OK Donnacha - you already mentioned the BBC. But I’ve never heard anyone from the BBC, in several discussions about those guidelines, mention the NUJ’s witness contributor document as an influence. Ho hum

But you said broadcasters. So who else?

Donnacha - you’re not honestly saying the NUJ came up with the original idea, in 2006, of TV stations paying their viewers for video clips, are you? Did it occur to you they’d been doing that for a while already?

It’s not ridiculous to ask for a little evidence when someone makes big claims about the impact their work has had. You said broadcasters adopted your recommendations, which means you are explicitly saying they took on the NUJ’s thinking and policies. I’ve never heard that said before, which is why I asked all those questions. You’ve offered nothing to support your claims.

The relevance this has to the broader debate is that, unfortunately, pronouncements like those you make in “Web 2.0 is rubbish” ensure the union seen as being a bit daft when it comes to talking about the future of our business. That’s a problem.