Internet is the opportunity for journalism's 'golden age' - Little

ONLINE journalism advocate Mark Little says that blogs are increasingly unimportant in the age of Twitter.

Little told members of DCU’s Journalism Society that blogging is “at the wrong end of the technological shift.” He added that politicians are beginning to use Twitter to communicate their message and they are trying influence conversations.

He told students that it is “wrong and dangerous” to assume that the only good journalism is to be found in newspapers. He said that the medium is not the message, and that people don’t necessarily care where they get their information from.

“We could be entering a golden age of journalism, so long as we get rid of a couple of myths. Content has no value unless it’s shared among people. You need a community to talk about it,” he said.

Little, who has taken a leave of absence from RTÉ to create the first pro-amateur news agency, says that phone cameras today are more advanced than the devices he started off using with RTÉ. He said journalism students need to be able to write basic HTML and should acquire multimedia skills.

He compared detractors of the internet to “the guy in the 1950s who said Elvis was only ‘making noise’.”

“If I was in a newspaper I’d say lets recruit the people who are blogging well... With WiMAX and 3G, you’ll soon be able to connect anywhere in the world.

“If what I’m saying sounds like science fiction, it’ll be standard in a few years time. You’ll find a level and that will be something you’re comfortable with. I’m not undermining how scary it can be.”

He advised students to build a basic multimedia kit. A dongle for connectivity, radio equipment, a good camera, a laptop, and a webcam should cost about €800, Little says, excluding a laptop.

“In 2005, seven of the top 10 websites were search engines. Since then, those top seven have been replaced by social platforms like Facebook. It shows that people want to participate in sharing news and information. People want to share the joy of stumbling across an unknown fact.

“Travel. Produce. Create. Share. Don’t wait for some big brand like RTÉ to offer you a job,” he said.

After the Chilean earthquake on February 27, Little spent the day analysing coverage of the event. Through users retweeting Little’s messages, he says his tweets were read by over 250,000 people.

He warned that advertisers currently don’t trust online media. He said that “they don’t want their brand appearing on a Youtube video beside someone shaking their bum.”