Usual fearless mass media “captains” are presently drowning in fear as furious waving times shake their boats and technological-internet winds announce drastic changes. Print media editors and journalists try to read what the shinning stars secretly plan ahead of them, just to get a simple glance at what their professional future will be like.
The M100 Youth Media Workshop held in Potsdam this summer united young journalists from 19 different countries to precede such lectures and creatively imagine what the future of journalism will be like.
“Newspapers will die”they say.”Quality in-depth written information will only be available for the elite!” they cry. “Citizen journalism will rise and explore unknown dimensions, as it will be them, in the future, who will serve as practical day-to-day information providers’ Professional journalists will be set aside, at best, playing a gate-keeping role for the selection of news”they sigh.
On the 16th floor of the Axel Springer building in Berlin, German blue jeans journalist/tour guide Tanit Koch affirmed that BILD is willing to do whatever is in its hands to prevent free daily newspapers from invading the German media scene. A couple of hours later, a couple of floors higher, red tie BILD political analyst Hans-Jarg Vehlewald confessed that the naked women on the back page of the journal he works for is actually a highly convincing incentive for the 12 million target audience they aim for everyday.
“Readers are less patient in every single way” he said. “We offer a mixture of information and entertainment” he smiled. “You cannot change your readers” he explained.
Through the entire bull session young journalists questioned him with sharp moral claws. Some of them even showed him their pointy fangs: the objectivity-ethic-duty-of-shaping-the-audience rhetoric, but they didn’t take him by surprise. He seemed rather delighted to practice his dodging skills from the funny accusations against a tabloid’s moral standards. Despite his elegant manners and polite arguments, red tie BILD political journalist Hans-Jarg Vehlewald did not uncover BILD’s magic recipe for success. He just kept insisting on the idea that BILD is and example of high quality journalism.
In the counterpart, media journalist Stefan Niggemeier and his crew enlightened the debate with an ambiguous optimistic view on the topic we were treating. “The more junk out there, the more need of professional journalism there will be” he proudly said. “Print media are doomed to disappear. But at least it’ll have a slow death” he exclaimed. “We cannot communicate as a society anymore because people are loosing the love for in-depth information, for getting the entire picture of what’s happening in the world… It is the best of times, it is the worst of times” he proclaimed.
Nonetheless, the congregation of young multicultural journalists in Potsdam certainly proved to be in love with the idea of justice and truth – probably the absolute best traits for communication professionals. Their quasi-instinctive idealistic beliefs about what journalism should and will become once they will crown the captains’ cap fill me with joy and hope. Joy for the utopia they describe and hope for their descriptions to become at once future realities.
By: Daniela Adamez (Spain)
