"In New Orleans a lot of bad information came from bloggers"

Les Hinton, chairman of News International, accused citizen journalists and bloggers of "amateurism, misrepresentation and failing to emulate the standards of traditional news organisations", reports The Guardian. Hinton, "Murdoch's chief lieutenant in London", spoke at the Society of Editors conference in Windermere, UK.

Referring to citizen journalist's role in covering Hurricane Katrina, he said, "In New Orleans a lot of bad information came from bloggers and amateur witnesses, all newly empowered with instant communication. We must be experts at getting it right and being reliable." He said that bloggers were responsible for reports of unrest and rape that were not approved later (see also previous posting). He said that people needed (traditional) journalists "more than ever to put things into context".

"Citizen blogs actually are stealing our audiences, at least our audiences' time. Their tanks are on our lawns. This brave new world requires new disciplines and skills. But we're still finding out what people want from new media operations, and so are they", he said.

He also said that newspapers will have to change their websites so that they are able to earn money from them. But to convince users from the "freeload generation" to pay for online content, papers will have to do more than just replicate what it is already in the paper. Hinton pointed out that many newspapers have been to slow to respond to the challenges of the digital age, because they feared that online operations would "eat into their profits". He said, "People have wrestled with the quandary of how you can grow aggressively your online presence without at the same time making your company less valuable. The fact is there are ways of doing both, and, simply put, it's a question of developing websites with your brands that add to what print does as opposed to simply replicating it."

Source: The Guardian