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<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Hi all</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">I know it's well after the discussion, but I thought this might be of interest - a mail I sent to Andrew Keen, after a five-minute discussion we were due to have on the BBC's News24 rolling satellite channel got cancelled at the last minute, because of some regional flooding in the North of England... There's yer quality media for ya, Andrew!?! His argument about how Web 2.0 is destroying the precious existing ecology of 'quality journalism' (among other things) prompted me to recall my own career in the field:</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Arial">"Andrew, I've been involved with newspapers, one way or another, for 20 years (even helped to start one up in 1999, called the Sunday Herald in Scotland (<a href="http://www.sundayherald.com/"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>www.sundayherald.com</u></font></a>, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/273216.stm"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/273216.stm</u></font></a>). I know well the precarious balance between breaking news stories/investigations, and the 'leisure narcissism' of consumer journalism, and how advertising is always happiest with a weighting toward the latter. We started our paper ostensibly as a defensive action against a competitor (the Scotsman) whose Sunday paper was hoovering up ad dollars - but the cultural moment was that of an aspirational Scottish bourgeoisie, post the Blair victory and the arrival of a Scottish Parliament, who would pay something for a quality journalistic option on their day of rest. For a good 6 or so years, the tension worked - but rather than some spurious objectivity, the journalists of the paper knew they were articulating a liberal, modernist Scotland. Yes, all the investigations and agendas were conducted with absolute journalistic probity - but you know your epistemology (good Scottish word), the truth is where you have a hunch it's hiding, and that hunch is never completely disinterested. I think you over-esteem existing journalistic practice - the joy of a Sunday paper was that you could exercise some discrimination over the barrage of press releases that daily colleagues seemed happy and lazy enough to print up, without much 'investigation' at all. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Arial">"The Sunday Herald has problems now, as Gannett took it over, and their ROI conditions are punitive, to say the least - not so much about web 2.0 crowding it out, as a rapacious quarterly-driven shareholder management philosophy. Ownership structure of old media has always been an incredibly important determinant of quality - you'll know the reason why the Guardian has so much ability and innovative freedom to blend old and new media (and I'm a blogger there, <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/</u></font></a>) is because it's a trust, not a publicly-listed company. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Arial">"We've just had a collective experience in Scotland where an independence-minded party (the SNP) has formed a government after an election, but in a press climate that (until the very last moment) allowed very little credibility to the nation-state option for Scots. The UK constitutional bias of Scottish papers has been long analyzed, in defiance of a 30-35% of Scots who regularly support the independence option. And Web 2.0 did play a role in articulating a civic nationalism in the run up to the election, one that the 'gatekeepers' did not respond to at all adequately - see <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mike_small/2007/05/it_will_be_the_web_wot_won_it.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mike_small/2007/05/it_will_be_the_web_wot_won_it.html</u></font></a>. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Arial">"I set up a blog after the election, Scottish futures (<a href="http://www.scottishfutures.net/"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>www.scottishfutures.net</u></font></a>), which was aimed at providing a different kind of space for ideas-and-policy people in Scotland - a place for columnists to get more serious and extended than their papers allow, and for them to have dialogues with academics, or access to scholarship relevant to Scottish development, in a one-stop portal. Yes, there's a gap between what the blog can do with my (and some pals') donatory labour, and what even the political-journalism rump of a national newspaper can do - but I'm getting print journalists placing valuable pieces with me because they can't get past the 'gatekeepers' of their own papers. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Arial">"Two bits of 'regulation' that I'm interested in (and I know you're interested in some regulatory response to web 2.0). Ofcom in the UK are talking about setting up a Public Service Publisher - <a href="http://del.icio.us/theplayethic/publicservicepublisher"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>http://del.icio.us/theplayethic/publicservicepublisher</u></font></a> - where net/game endeavours can make a bid for public money, if they can prove that they are serving a public good. Lots of people who want to do good work with Web 2.0 and games are getting very excited about this. Is this so weird? The Swedes subsidise their newspapers, in order to preserve press diversity. I know you like your Habermas - let me post you this extract from my Scottish Futures blog :<a href="http://scottishfutures.typepad.com/scottish_futures/media_regulation/index.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>http://scottishfutures.typepad.com/scottish_futures/media_regulation/index.html</u></font></a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="3" color="#333333" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">".....Take this <a href="http://www.signandsight.com/features/1349.html"><font color="#193662" style="color: #193662"><u>startling article </u></font></a>by the German social theorist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%83%C2%BCrgen_Habermas"><font color="#193662" style="color: #193662"><u>Jurgen Habermas</u></font></a>, published in Die Zeit this May. Observing how the successful Süddeutsche Zeitung is still finding itself prey to upheaval and financial takeover, Habermas explores the role of the 'quality' press in maintaining the health of German democracy. Could we extend the same regulations that protect the rights of the citizen to be informed in broadcast media, to newspapers? Habermas writes:</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="3" color="#333333" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"><b>Public communication [Habermas's catch-all term for the press] is a force that stimulates and orients citizens' opinions and desires, while at the same time forcing the political system to adjust and become more transparent. Without the impulse of an opinion-forming press, one that informs reliably and comments diligently, the public sphere will lose this special type of energy. When gas, electricity or water are at stake, the state must guarantee the energy supply for the population.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="3" color="#333333" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"><b>Shouldn't it do likewise when this other type of 'energy' is at risk - the absence of which will cause disruptions that harm the state? It is not a 'system failure' when the state tries to protect the public commodity that is the quality press. The real question is just the pragmatic one of how that can be done best.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="3" color="#333333" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Incidentally these aren't the wild, untested notions of a famous intellectual. Sweden has a <a href="http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3011/a/19032"><font color="#193662" style="color: #193662"><u>Press Subsidies Council</u></font></a>, whose explicit brief is to ensure diversity of opinion and ownership in the Swedish press, through managed subsidy of title..."</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="3" color="#333333" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">I know this is a bit far-away from Bay Area excitedness, but thought you might be interested."</font></p> </font></div> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I hope the iDC crew might be interested too... </span></font></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></font></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">best, pk </font></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 12px; ">Pat Kane</div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.theplayethic.com">http://www.theplayethic.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://theplayethic.typepad.com">http://theplayethic.typepad.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.newintegrity.org">http://www.newintegrity.org</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.patkane.com">http://www.patkane.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.scottishfutures.net">http://www.scottishfutures.net</a></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">All mail to: <a href="mailto:patkane@theplayethic.com">patkane@theplayethic.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></body></html>