RUSBRIDGER TO BARBER - FORGET CHARGING, LET'S TAX

26/07/2009

The scene last week at the first Media Standards Trust Why Journalism Matters lecture had all the warmth of a corporate boardroom.  For all his talk about the societal benefits of journalism, Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber suggested that the future of journalism lay in the vast expanse of some anonymous industrial park. 

 

The second talk in the series could not have been more different.

 

As Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger laid out his barnstorming reproach, the lush, historic atmosphere of the British Academy was transformed into the creative confines of a hip East End design warehouse.

 

Taxation and Representation

 

Sharing Barber’s philosophy on the inevitability of New Media, Rusbridger deviated from Barber’s business plan, reducing the argument between the two down to the base importance of ideas and information. 

 

Instead of treating ideas, per Barber, as means to the greater end of profitability, they should serve only themselves and the public at large.  One possible way to create such an environment is to return to an earlier epoch of production, following in the footsteps of rather evolved dinosaurs the BBC. 

 

Pre-empting the inevitable gasps and groans emanating from the reporter contingent, the Guardian Editor, himself wary of the monopolising impulse of centralisation, suggested that public funding - as opposed to “muddling clean ideas” with private subsidies per Ariana Huffington - may provide the better foundation on which to build upon the Guardian’s innovative web community penetrating projects.

 

We, the People

 

To Rusbridger, we, the media, are the people.  The Internet has only heightened our awareness of this historical fact.     

 

The task for journalists lay in creating “mutualised newspapers” that fully exploit the horizontal social networks of the web.  Only by “neutralising” the old perceptions of “us against them” and creating an environment of reciprocity can newspapers survive such trying times. 

 

And it’s not all cumulus clouds and clear blue skies either.

 

Citizens are the perfect resource of unlimited surplus value.  Instead of the often arduous and expensive investigative days of yore, journalists, like the Guardian’s Paul Lewis, have utilised various citizen multimedia sources – photos, videos, iPhones, Blogs and Twitter – on the veritable cheap, “amplifying their voices to force an otherwise unknown narrative.”

 

Fool Proof

 

As expected, parts of Rusbridger’s plan were met with cautious resistance. 

 

For one, as a rather perspicuous colleague pointed out, the Internet was not without its share of foolhardy opinion.  Newspapers working within this ‘mutualised’ environment must devise ‘fool proof’ filters to counteract such distortions.

 

Also, as Rusbridger admitted, the numbers were yet to add up, leaving the future of the printed word very much in the air.  Rusbridger himself was careful to admit that he remained unsure “how long the Guardian will continue in print.”    

 

Yet for all this, the future is more bright ideas, than glum industry. 

 

After all, people need expertise.  While sites like MySociety and FixMyStreet are useful tools, not everyone is able to render complex data into a normative narrative.  Even the supposed we-creating community of Twitter is full of individual experts, like the Media Society’s Adrian Monck and the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss, able to rise above the general rabble.

 

So instead of currency being the future of ideas, ideas, following Saatchi and Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts, may be the currency of the future.

 

Ryan Mahan