Blessed are the newsbreakers; but which ones can you trust in the age of Twitter?

There’s a number of great pieces online about where new authority is emerging to challenge the older models, particularly in the wake of the US election and superstorm Sandy. Forbes had this to say in response to a mainstream anchor thanking people for ‘helping out’: News flash for my local news anchors: the “amateurs” aren’t “helping out” the “professionals.” They are mostly ignoring them. They are mostly sending their pictures to their friends, not to you. And we’ve seen the …

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David Carr #NYT and fearless journalism…

If you missed BBC 4’s excellent documentary on journalism in a digital age, then it is well worth the hour and a half it takes to watch on the iPlayer this weekend… (I want the DVD if it ever comes out in that format)… I remember talking with John Lloyd at the Frontline Club in London a few years back when wikileaks was pouring out all those clipped insights from the US State Department, and recall him saying that we …

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Blogging, journalism and the beleaguered State: Is it time to end the neurosis?

I had intended writing another instalment on the ongoing crisis within journalism, but time’s short for original thought these days, especially when there are folk like Jay Rosen (et al) to do the thinking for you. Here’s the Guardian’s excellent précis of his presentation to SXSW. It’s refreshing to say the least: Mainstream journalists’ antagonism towards bloggers, he suggested, was sustained by the huge stress they find themselves under, which stems from five developments: 1. The collapsing economic model of …

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What’s the point of journalists any more?

Though Saturday is largely an Unconference and the attendees will be fixing the agenda and timetable on the day (with a bit of healthy pre-event lobbying on the Uservoice site), I’m going to be chairing one whole-event session after lunch on the whole question of the Fourth Estate. We’ve got a democracy that relies on them, at least in part, to provide a counterweight to powerful interests. But their current business model appears to be changing, and we – in …

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End this FOI game and give us everything (you reasonably can)!

Hugh Linehan in the Irish Times captures something essential about what Freedom of Information means for public institutions, and that in fact the kind of backwards and forwarding over the precise language of any request is missing the point. He mentions a fascinating paper written by Nat O’Connor for Tasc, in which he argues that democracy is not just about voting, which is actually the last link in the chain, it is also about tracking, criticising government in between elections …

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A tale of two cameras

After Sunday’s Independent Hunger Strike Commemoration a video appeared online showing the tail end of the march chanting ‘IRA’ (and for some bizarre reason a lenghty section recording photographers). There was quite a bit in advance of that person deciding to hit record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqX3Qa_pcoI&feature=player_embedded Blank

Blogging the riots…

The eye witness accounts have been stunning from Back Seat Drivers and Dossing Times, along with DT’s great capture of the scene ripped from the City Council’s traffic cameras. Take a bow lads! Strong shot from Flickr of a Guard apparently about to be hit with a brick – with, bizarrely, a Villa fan in foregrond). More from Celtic Freedom; Chris Logan thinks RSF are a disgrace. Dublin Met Blogs has loads of stuff. Kevin was on the ground too. …

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