How often have you heard newspapers say that they are the voice of the voiceless?
A lot I bet.
What a pile of shite.
When the voiceless get vocal, when the audience gets uppity, the newspapers get frightened, offended and defensive.
A couple of examples. The Max Gogarty saga is one.
Short version: Max gets signed up by the Guardian to write a travel blog. He starts with;
Hello. I'm Max Gogarty. I'm 19 and live on top of a hill in north London.
At the minute, I'm working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.
Trite shite. Comments ensue. Lots of comments. Not positive. It then transpires that Max is the son of some-time Guardian travel writer Paul. Nepotism comments ensue. Many. Some vitriolic. Some even more vitriolic. [read about it on Joanna's or Pete's blog or search]. Blog gets taken down.
What we see here is audience participation. The voiceless speaking, ney shouting, and what they say is: do not like this.
The reaction from the champions of the voiceless?
Caroline Davies of The Observer writes of "Hate mail hell of a gap-year bloggerr". Emily Bell the Guardian's director of digital content says: "As publisher, we have a duty of care to him" and "It gives one a new perspective and empathy with workers in the health, education and retail sectors who have to mop up a fair amount of face-to-face abuse on a daily basis."
One of my favorites is by Rafael Behr
But as the case of Max Gogarty shows, there is no presumption of civility or community spirit online. His fate should be instructive to politicians. He was flamed because he was perceived to be bogus. Self-selecting judges ruled that he had no business writing for the Guardian. The message was transmitted swiftly, sometimes eloquently, sometimes wittily. His travel diary was extinguished. As an expression of mob will, it was very efficient
So. User comment, the vigorous expression of popular dissatisfaction, is now mob rule. Ahhh, it has to be you see because it is aimed at our newspaper! How dare those ungrateful cheeky bastards turn their ire on us when we gave them a voice.
My other example is from Sweden. A journalist at a Swedish newspaper got the job of moderating the comments section of the site.
Two things happen.
Firstly the journalist Jaikus for help on how to change the rules of moderation. The rules are very restrictive. The Jaiku community helps with suggestions and support.
The attitude the rules formalize is arrogance. No commenting on evenings or weekends. When she took up a discussion with the powers that be and as an example suggested that they contact a poster who had a post refused, there was absolutely no understanding of why: "Thats not the way we do things - it is clearly stated that we have the right not to publish". And even worse: "Thats not the way we do things at a NEWSPAPER".
A thread on the comments board about the rules for posting was killed in the following way:
Debate over:
Time to end this debate. Please read the rules for posting and note that we only publish a selection of the posts.
And there is the problem in a nutshell.
They still don't get it!
We are in the middle of a power shift. It is not that the rules of the game are changing and the media is slow to adapt.
It is a whole different game. Megaphone media are dead. That does not mean they wont be around for a (long) while, nor that they wont be (decreasingly) profitable. But they have no growth future.
They still don't get it!
Media conglomerates have been able to (miss)treat their public pretty much as they wanted for a long time. And they still do not see the public as equal partners. As co-creators. As collaborators.
This is why I do not believe the talk of community building. Every time I hear it mentioned it is always in a discussion on how to monetize the users. How to "harvest" user generated content. How to get the user to fill the gaps created by under-staffed, under-trained (and mostly under-paid) journalists at the coal-face of 30% profit margining media companies.
Get a clue. The audience is grabbing back its voice. We in the media are going to get pilloried by the voices we say we mirror, represent, reproduce. And about time too.
The voiceless are less so now. Voices that are being used. Raised. Heard.
If we are to survive we need to listen. Talk with not at. Cooperate with our communities. Understand that we are A voice (and an important one) but never again THE voice.
Update: More foolishness
In a way it is ironic how some people sit atop their tower of arrogance and sincerely believe that they are acting in the best interest of all the poor sods down there. Until the sods grab them by the feet, that is. It is almost like some of the absolute monarchs of Europe, who were swept by revolutions but could not even to the last moment believe what was happening; why were all the happy subjects objecting quite so strongly.
Posted by: Dilyan | November 09, 2008 at 19:06