Out With A Bang

There are several reasons why all roads wound their way towards the National Union of Journalists today.

One was a piece that appeared in MediaShift this week; one that returned to the theme of revolution…

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/11/changes-in-media-over-the-past-550-years318.html

For me, there was nothing ‘revolutionary’ in what was being said; in fact, in my little world I would these days venture to suggest that this was accepted ‘orthodoxy’ – that the arrival of the web is currently changing the way world communicates and interacts with itself in a way not seen since 1500.

That we need to party like its 1499, not 1999…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=260

But what made David’s piece pertinent to the current debate was his musings on how the put-upon scribes and monks of the time might have felt as they – as a professional trade body – were made all-but irrelevant by the march of technology.

‘There aren’t good records of their protests,’ writes David,

‘But I can just imagine their reasoning: that people would be overwhelmed by too much information; that they would become isolated reading at home rather than coming to church; that mediocrity would prevail if publishing was put into the hands of ordinary people.

‘Basically, all of the same criticisms we hear of the Internet today. In the end, the scribes lost and the printing press won. With the benefit of historical perspective, we view the result as inevitable. And we are seeing the same dynamic play out today with traditional journalism and the participatory internet… ‘

For me the challenge now facing the National Union of Journalists is the same challenge that faced the NUM 550 years ago as the National Union of Monks found the great unwashed trampling all over their lawn; after all, who needs a trained sub-editor when you only have 140 characters to play with…

A gilded dropped cap; or finessing out an awkward column turn… they are skills of another age. As are those of the paper boy and girl. Delivering news on the back of a bicycle is soooo 1499.

And that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the machinations of the Murdochs or the Baileys. My Little Man is nine-years-old; its not in his genes with a ‘g’ to read a newspaper; what’s in his jeans with a ‘j’ is a mobile phone…

… and there lies our future. Somehow.

Yes, defend your members’ interests. Of course.

But, for me, their best interest is served by learning to embrace the new, not stubbornly clinging to the old….

Read this and the language is that of political opposition; indeed, of the NUM; as if either this Government or the next has any real idea how to tame this web beast…

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44673&c=1

If neither vision sits easily with the NUJ, what exactly does? Where’s the plan?

If we can start to sketch out a future – and it is still only a sketch – it is increasingly likely that our futures will be small – and localised. ‘Localised’ to a postcode or a place; or likewise ‘localised’ to a subject or a passion.

As the web smashes everything into a molecular wasteland of disparate content and disengaged readers, the new DNA of news will be rebuilt via networks that are small, but perfectly-formed.

Communities of place or passion coalescing around part-time sifters of data, etc, etc…

That’s the new landscape. And if the NUJ don’t ‘get’ this soon, by the time the back bench of the Daily Express is looking for a new living, the likes of a Josh Halliday and his www.SR2blog.com will have populated this new world without them.

I look at what Will (Perrin), Nikki and Mike are doing with their 4iP funding out of TalkAboutLocal and why aren’t the NUJ starting to feed their people into those kind of workshops?

Trying to see if they couldn’t start to promote and support the new forms of journalism; what lessons can they learn from www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk ? Is there a model that – together – we can build to the benefit of their members?

Digging in behind the barricades of traditional political rhetoric – inky workers of the world unite against the bosses and the Press barons – ignores the simplest of truths.

That the bosses and the barons are bust; they’ve gone. Or are going.

Our future lies as a cottage industry; one that just needs a little organising. And for that, history can still be our guide…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=30