Control was so 20th century
Last night I did a presentation on Web 2.0 and social media for the digital division of the Berlingske Officin - a corporation of several Danish papers. The setup was called a “champagne-buzz” = an informal setting at the end of a long day’s conference on digital media and future strategies for a media company more than 200 years old. They served me champagne, and I was not allowed to use Power Point, which I almost never do anyway - but I managed to persuade the organizar to print a t-shirt for me with one carefully selected slide. I chose a quote of Peter Hirshberg of Technorati that he made at the recent OnHollywood conference: “CONTROL was so 20th century”. I wanted to illustrate how usergenerated content is wrenching control over the news and content from the papers. And control is what an editor values most = this loss of control is what he fears most. And if he believes that he can still maintain total control, then he lives in the last century.
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:45 pm
It’ll be interesting to watch how the new free newspapers entering the danish market will use the collaborative technologies to interact with their readers. I fear that they’ll be more focused on a traditional approach - ’cause they fear the other players.
Usergenerated journalism to spark some new life in danish newspapers - but do they (we - actually - working at Engineering Weekly) try it out.
What do your hear from them?