Tuija TV Tuija Aalto - The Blog in English

The mainstream media cannot afford to ignore blogging, says Kevin Anderson, reporter & producer of the highly interactive World Have Your Say program.

The BBC World wants to enable the global online discussion, Anderson told fellow public broadcasters at the EBU Multimedia Meets Radio Seminar.

Deutsche Welle wishes to turn their Best of Blogs - contest website into a permanent user-generated archive for quality weblogs. They have awarded BOBs in 2004 and 2005 to growing mainstream media and, perhaps more importantly, into blogger attention.

Sveriges Radio aims to publish all their analog radio content on the web on demand in six months. SR has already seen huge success in their podcast services - SR Head of New Media, Mats Åkerlund told me today that the SR podcast - programs have been downloaded a million times in January-February 2006.

Blogger, author and director of The Center For Citicen media, Dan Gillmor urges mainstream journalists to listen more. What does he mean? And how is a journalist to show that they are? Where? Their place, or the reader's? (A note for regular readers of this blog - this post is in English because I am attending a seminar that discusses blogging and podcasting and I am hoping to get some comments in english this time - thank you in advance!)

Dan Gillmor wants professional journalists to start listening in order to make media more interactive. In a recent interview (3/3/2006) at iPressroom.com's On The Record ... Online -podcast with Eric Schwartzman he said: "I'd like to see individual journalists, pro journalists, to be more willing to listen to readers who want to talk about what they're doing and offer their own insights" -- "if journalism is turning into a conversation, then sounds to me that the first thing that journalists will have to do better is have to learn to listen". Known for his slogan "My readers know more than I do", he believes mainstream media can do things like asking the readers to help them with stories. "Inviting the readers into the process, that would be a good start", he says. "Big media are inviting readers to send photos and video but I'm thinking about something deeper." But what exactly constitutes listening, then? Listening to what and to who exactly? And who says they aren't listening already?

As long as e-mail has been commonplace the audience has been able to easily send feedback to journalists, sometimes engaging in correcspondence back and forth. We others just don't know of it. Sometimes answering mail takes several hours of the journalist's day. Now, all of a sudden, that is not good enough, now all dialogue should be made public for everyone else to read.

If we do accept the idea, how can we change the system from private e-mail feedback to public discussion on the program's website or elsewhere? How do we motivate the members of the audience to bother to write something public, if there's not really any extra benefit fot them? "Let's not make a number out of it", is a very common mentality here in Finland. "I had better not stick my head out and I have nothing that important to say, really."

How about the professional journalists, then? Some have started blogging themselves, because they find it an easy way to talk to their readers or listeners and have them talk to back to you. Some choose to blog privately and anonymously and not mess blogging with their professional journalism. Some are wondering how blogging fits their job description at all and whether they at least should be paid extra (Should mainstream bloggers be paid extra? Should I?).

When the mainstream media indeed wants to show that they are "listening" they might open a discussion forum and welcome everyone there. Someone might point out that there are already more forums than people interested in quality discussion.

But instead of insisting that the discussion take place at their place, what if journalists learned to join in where discussion is already going?

As a blogger, how often do you find professional journalists frequenting your blog and participate in the discussion? Are there any good examples?

(Originally published at my YLE blog Tuija täällä hei)

It's official. We are digital. We live in a digital world. The for-year-old BBC technology radio program Go Digital will be called The Digital Planet from now on.

533 days until the analog tv switch-off in Finland.