Across the pond

This part will explain why Guardian Unlimited printed this obvious libel.

The Guardian, like all newspapers is cutting down on its budget for sub-editors to cope with the effects of the recession and the huge financial pressures on newspapers. They are having to do so at a time when they are publishing an ever increasing number of words each day, thanks to the escalation in the size of websites. And in my day on newspapers the job of the sub included copying any story with a libel in it to the editor, via the chief sub.

No newspaper can afford to sub the blogs as well as the print stuff. But for most blogs that does not matter, because most stories are carried in print as well as on the web.  And most newspaper blogs are written by journalists whose main job is to write for print.

Greenslade’s blog is almost unique in that respect. He is paid as a blogger and his articles do not appear in the print version.  Moreover he is a prolific blogger. He blogs at all times of day, and at 11.15 in the morning most of the subs have not even come in to work.

But what is generally true is that all newspapers are publishing far more words on the web than they are in print. Which is why many management thinkers as well a few media pundits (including Greenslade) are speculating that the newspapers of the future, might be staffed by editors and subs, with most of the reporting being done by citizen journalists.

The advocates of this view point have got part of a case. Many natural disaster stories and things like aircraft and train crashes can be better covered by a combination of citizen journalists on the spot and good subbing. And war reporting can be enhanced by the use of citizen journalists behind enemy lines.

But no citizen journalist can compete with a trained political journalist who can get to talk with cabinet ministers as well as MPs, top civil servants and trade union leaders, and be able to make a snap judgment on the different versions of the ‘truth’ they give him.

It is more likely that the duplication of effort between the web and print will be eliminated by the electronic newspaper supplanting the printed newspaper.

But we are still a long way from that.

Because no-one has yet found a way of producing enough revenue from an electronic newspaper to employ the number and quality of journalists required to produce a serious newspaper.

And because the printed newspaper can be read much more quickly than by messing around scrolling on screen. And if you think printing it out is an option, just try printing out the whole of The Times or the Washington Post. It would take you a week, be much more unreadable and use up more trees than the product you can still have delivered for 80p a day in time for you to read it at the breakfast table.

The future is on the way.

But it has not yet arrived.