The mutualisation of news

“Gone are the days of "us and them" journalism”, suggests that there is no longer any different between the audience and the journalists with the increasing level of normal people becoming “citizen journalists”. The use of new and digital media has given the audiences the power to produce their own media product and level up with the journalists, according to Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, now our journalists and readers as equal partners.

"The mutualisation of news is a very powerful idea that particularly works for the Guardian, as our relationship with our readers is very strong. We can use the community of our readers in ways we would not have been able to in the past."

Rusbridger says that in order to make the members feel involved and more interested, the Guardian should build trust by behaving like the old-style mutual building societies. The web has led to a news community where ideas and news are shared rather than delivered, as new and digital media has become more accessible through the use of the Internet world wide. He also suggests that, "By continuing to go down this route, we will be more diverse and genuinely more plural than other media organizations and create a huge external resource. We need to continue breaking down the perceptions of a remote journalist who is a preacher, living distantly, and newspapers as being in bed with power and on the side of power, rather than the reader.

Rusbridger believes that new applications such as Twitter make it increasingly possible for individual journalists to publish outside the constraints of their newspapers and website and develop direct relationships with communities of readers.

An example of this would be Guardian journalist Jemima Kiss, who had more than 12,000 followers on Twitter in June 2009 and uses them to get help in researching stories, this method can also be referred to as “Crowd sourcing”, as Jemima uses all the information she gets from the crowed and makes news out of it as they often bombard her with all the information she needs. It represents a blurring of the lines between journalism and readers. She says: you help me with researching this story and I will let you know when it is ready.

". The Guardian technology pod had 682,000 followers on Twitter in June 2009, which is nearly twice as large as the number of people who buy the Guardian every day. The idea of journalists publishing directly is no longer shocking to the audience or publishers. "The way we tend to work is that there are always early adopters of these new technologies, and it works best when individual journalists who have a passion for it, use and explore it says Rusbridger.An example of this is that the Guidelines has gone online for Twitter. "These are a general common-sense guide rather than being prescriptive."

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The policeman suspended over the death of a G20 protester in London has been signed off sick - following a suspected heart attack. The officer, from the Metropolitan Police’s Territorial Support Group (TSG), collapsed at his home after realizing he was the person captured on film allegedly pushing newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson to the ground. Mr Tomlinson, 47, is thought to have died of a heart attack.



Alan Rusbridger says: "At the heart of this story was reporter Paul Lewis doing what a traditional reporter should do. The death of Tomlinson raised barely a mention in the other media. The official police version was that he died of a heart attack while they were trying to rescue him under a hail of bottles.

Paul Lewis (Gaurdian) doubted this online and this helped to raised qquestions in the paper and also on Twitter, which as a result led the people to look through their cameras and mobiles in order to catch the killer of Mr Tomlinson, as this is where the power of the crowd comes in and a fund manager from New York realized he had captured the assault on Tomlinson and it was an extremely dramatic piece of film.

In some cases “citizen journalists or “Crowd sourcing” is not as important, however in the case of the G20 protests, this seemed to be the most important part and it shows that sometimes a footage can be more important than it first seemed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169384/Officer-G20-protest-death-signs-sick-following-heart-attack.html#ixzz1FGYHc5Xo