Natalie Fenton New Media, Old News, Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (2009)

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.All three have elite educational backgrounds (with degreesrespectively from Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities, and, inthe case of Tony Curzon Price, a doctorate from London University).Thepeople they recruited tended to come from similar backgrounds (thesmall staff of openDemocracy, in mid 2008 for example, included peoplewith degrees from Yale and McGill Universities).This shared educa-tional background predisposed the e-zine, under all three regimes, tolook for certain kinds of article critically independent (whether on theright or left), evidence-based, and analytical.Above all, at the very heart of the magazine, there has been a sharedcommitment to some version of internationalist humanism.All the cen-tral figures in the magazine, in its different phases including the long-serving, influential deputy editor, David Hayes have believed in theimportance of being respectful to other cultures; of getting people indifferent countries to speak for themselves rather than be spoken for;and of developing a reciprocal exchange based on a relationship ofequality.The investment made in improving foreign writers copy throughsubediting was partly borne out of a desire to foster discursive equal-ity between nations.Facilitating international dialogue as a way ofpromoting greater understanding has been the central telos of the mag-azine in all its incarnations (whatever its limitations in practice).Fenton-3900-Ch-06:Fenton-Sample 12/08/2009 2:53 PM Page 116116 NEW MEDIA, OLD NEWSTechnology and MoneyThe economics of openDemocracy has also been central to its develop-ment.Indeed, its history underlines the point that web-publishing beyond the modest blog is far from free.The internet lowers costs by transferring print and reproduction coststo the user.It opens up market access by bypassing wholesalers andretailers (the last a major obstacle to minority magazines unless theirdistribution is protected in law, as in France and Greece).The globalreach of the internet also makes new kinds of ventures possiblethrough the aggregation of minority audiences in different countries(producing a situation that is analogous to art house film production).openDemocracy benefited from all of these advantages lower costs,enhanced market access, and global aggregation.But the e-zine still had to spend money.Its largest outlays were on thesalaries of staff to commission, subedit, and publish (i.e.code, lay-out andpresent) content, and to administer its business; payments to contribu-tors; and office overheads.In addition, it had miscellaneous calls on itsbudget, for example �120,000 on website design and redesign in its firstthree years (and on the commissioning of a less labour-intensive website,in the subsequent period).The e-zine in fact cut a number of corners.Itspent little money on promotion and translation; paid its editorial stafflow salaries, and developed a network of volunteer and intern labour.Even so, it spent around �4.35 million in 2001 8.14 Part of this outlay wasadmittedly misspent, since it was directed towards generating incomethat failed to materialize.But a significant part of openDemocracy s expen-diture was unavoidable, given what it set out to do.The real obstacle to net publishing lies on the revenue side.The worldwide web was given as a free gift to the world in order to foster inter-connection and the open accessing of knowledge (Berners-Lee, 2000).This legacy was supported by workers within the computer industry(Weber, 2004), and reluctantly embraced by large media corporations,nearly all of whom now provide free access to their online news sites(partly in a bid to protect their offline business).Users have thus becomeaccustomed to not paying for web-based press content.This made it impossible for openDemocracy to charge a website entry fee.Its audience, though substantial, was too small in relative terms to generatesubstantial advertising.The e-zine s lofty humanism was not like an urgenthumanitarian cause or a passionate partisan commitment propelling sym-pathisers to reach for their credit cards.Yet, the e-zine made an undertak-ing to the Ford Foundation that it would seek to become self-fundingwhen it received a $1.6 million dollar loan.openDemocracy took on staffto syndicate articles, market archived articles as e-books, sell institutionalFenton-3900-Ch-06:Fenton-Sample 12/08/2009 2:53 PM Page 117117LIBERAL DREAMS AND THE INTERNETsubscriptions, solicit donations, and sell advertising.The new businesspersonnel were expensive, and failed to raise significant revenue.This plunged the magazine, at its peak with 24 employees, into a crisisthat almost destroyed it.It received emergency charitable funding thatenabled a soft landing in 2005 6.It then lurched into a near terminalcrisis in 2007, after two major funders Ford and Rockefeller declinedto help further.The magazine even moved for a time, in 2007, into thewaiting room of a friendly NGO, after finding itself without an office,before eventually securing better accommodation.Its core staff dwin-dled to three people in 2008, with others employed in linked projectsthat contributed to overall overheads.These projects included one devoted to cultivating an informed andcritical dialogue about Russia funded by George Soros s Open SocietyInstitute, and another devoted to British politics (and constitutionalreform) financed by Rowntree.In effect, this development has come torepresent a new funding model: the parcelling out of openDemocracy swebsite into discrete projects that appeal to different charitable trusts.Italso represents a move towards the partial Balkanization of the websiteinto nation-centred enclaves that sits unhappily with the international-ism of the project.Indeed, perhaps the most significant implication of this study isthat the international space between commercial and state-linkedmedia between CNN and BBC World News, The Economist and AlJazeera is not sustained by an online revenue stream that will enablenew ventures to grow and flourish.There is not a ready-made businessmodel that will support worldwide online journalism of a kind pio-neered by openDemocracy.Partly for this reason, the building of an international public sphere isgoing to be a lot more difficult in practice than its magical realization hasbeen in critical social theory.And, to judge from this case study, globalinequalities of power and resources are likely to distort the internationalpublic sphere that will eventually emerge.Endnotes1.Other synonyms for the international public sphere are the transnationalpublic sphere and global public sphere.2.For divergent socialist, radical democratic and liberal interpretations, seerespectively Ugarteche (2007), Fraser (2007) and Volkmer (2003).3.For an especially illuminating discussion, see Held et al.(1999) and Held(2004) who argue that a more democratically accountable, multi-layeredsystem of governance is the best way to reassert public power.Fenton-3900-Ch-06:Fenton-Sample 12/08/2009 2:53 PM Page 118118 NEW MEDIA, OLD NEWS4.Both authors declare a personal interest: James Curran as an early volun-teer, external media co-editor with David Elstein and Todd Gitlin; andTamara Witschge who is currently involved in the e-zine s strategic discus-sions.Both authors have sought to maintain, however, academic detach-ment in writing this essay.5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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