My presentation at the Bloggerreise (Blogger Tour) des Auswärtigen Amts (Foreign Office)

1. A tale of two citizen journalisms
Blogger Tour 2010
Visitor‘s Programme of the Federal Republic of Germany
At the Invitation of the Federal Foreign Office
Berlin, May 14, 2010
Matthias Spielkamp
ms@immateriblog.de
Twitter: @spielkamp (mainly in German...)

2. www.immateriblog.de (since 2003)

3. www.iRights.info (since 2005)

4. www.recherche-info.de (since 2005)

5. Citizen journalism in Germany
1977: Radio Dreyeckland, Freiburg i.B.
- "pirate radio" (Germany, France, Switzerland)
- background: fight against nuclear power plants
- legalized since 1988
- funding:
- dues of approx. 1.500 members
- 0.01 percent of public broadcasting fees of the state
of Baden-Württemberg

6. Free / Citizen / Non-commercial Radio
- 81 stations in Germany
- radio and TV (so called "open channels")
- instituted by law and publicly financed in three
states (Bremen, Lower Saxony, Northrhein
Westphalia)

7. taz - die tageszeitung

8. taz - die tageszeitung
founded 1978/79 in West Berlin by journalists and
non-journalists as a response to the political and
journalistic situation during and after the so-
called German Autumn ("Deutscher Herbst")

9. taz - die tageszeitung
today an established left-wing nationwide daily
with a circulation of >55.000 copies, 250
employees

10. indymedia

11. indymedia
"Indymedia is a collective of independent media
organizations and hundreds of journalists offering
grassroots, non-corporate coverage."

12. Wikinews

13. Weblogs
- few general interest / politcal weblogs
- no German equivalent to Huffington Post
- no German equivalent to Spot.us or ProPublica

14. Weblogs

15. Weblogs

16. Weblogs

17. Weblogs

18. Weblogs

19. Weblogs

20. Crowdsourcing
- no example of crowdsourcing project by German
mainstream media I know of

21. Crowdsourcing | Data Driven Journalism
- Open Data Network

22. abgeordnetenwatch.de

23. mapnificent.de

24. bundestagger

25. wahlversprechen.info

26. Crowdsourcing | Data Driven Journalism
none of these is financed or supported by
mainstream media

27. S.B. Johnson: Five things...

28. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
...all sane people agree on about blogs and
mainstream journalism (so can we stop talking
about them now?) - August 1, 2006

29. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
1. Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism
will continue to play a vital role in covering news
events, and in shaping our interpretation of those
events, as it should.

30. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
2. Bloggers will grow increasingly adept at
covering certain kinds of news events, but not all.
They will play an increasingly important role in
the interpretation of all kinds of news.

31. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
3. The majority of bloggers won't be concerned
with traditional news at all.

32. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
4. Professional, edited journalism will have a
much higher signal-to-noise ratio than blogging;
examples of sloppy, offensive, factually incorrect,
or tedious writing will be abundant in the
blogosphere. But diamonds in that rough will be
abundant as well.

33. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
5. Blogs -- like all modes of contemporary media
-- are not historically unique; they draw upon and
resemble a number of past traditions and forms,
depending on their focus.

34. S.B. Johnson: Five things...
So here's my proposal:
if you're writing an article or a blog post about
this issue, and your argument revolves around
one or more of these points -- and doesn't add
anything else of substance -- STOP WRITING.
Pick a new topic. Move on. There's nothing to
see here.

35. MSM

36. MSM - FAZ, May 3, 2010

37. MSM - FAZ, May 3, 2010
... the casual reader is sickend by
the smell of the gutter that arises
from the blogs...

38. It ain't over yet...

39. Thank you!
Matthias Spielkamp
www.immateriblog.de
ms@immateriblog.de
Twitter: @spielkamp
www.iRights.info
Twitter: @iRightsinfo
www.recherche-info.de
Twitter: @rechercheblog
CC-by 3.0 de