Danish Journalism

Twitter have been a well kept secret among Danish journalists. Not that the media haven't been writing about it. They have. But not many Danish journalists have openly been using the micro-blogging service Twitter to get news and stories. This is no longer the case.

More and more media are now refering to Twitter as the source for news stories. Some of the best know examples in Denmark was when another newspaper, Nyhedsavisen, was declared bankroupt. The owner, Morten Lund, annonced it on Twitter also, and a lot of media began to refer to the owners tweets as quotations instead of making actual interviews with him.

And the Danish media have taken the next step and are now using Twitter as a place to launch news stories. Last example was when a danish sports newspaper "Tipsbladet" made a "Breaking News" on Twitter about a soccer player who allegedly have been involved in a violent act.

The Online manager Kristoffer Friis from Tipsbladet explained why with this statement (translated from Danish):

We were pretty sure that the story was true, but we couldn't write it on our website, so we choose Twitter….

But is that really the right way to use micro-blogging as a news source? As a media where to place rumours and and a place to collect quick statements which can go instead of real interviews?

I personally hope not.

Micro-blogs such as Twitter is a very interesting way of communications. And it's already a place where news are first launched and the Danish media are also present there with Twitter-profiles such as EkstraBladet, Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc. but the number of followers are typical below 100 so it's not yet a success. Perhaps because the media needs to learn how Twitter works.

More interessting are the Danish journalists who are more active than the media themselves. More and more Danish journalists can be found at Twitter (some of them are blogging here at Danish Journalism). It's learning by doing as it's the case with most social media. So in the near future we can probably see the Danish media evolve on Twitter and other social media.

It's possible to see a list of journalists and media using Twitter here. A few Danish journalists are listed - if some are missing (and I'm sure there are) you can update the wiki yourself or just write a comment here and I will update the wiki with your information.

• Danish journalist Twitter-reports from court room during the Stein Bagger trial (June 10, 2009) (0)

News, Tools Berlingske Tidenden, EkstraBladet, Morten Lund, Nyhedsavisen, Politiken, Tipsbladet, Twitter

On Thursday, the 5th of February, Danish Online News Association (DONA), of which I am a member of the board, had arranged a panel discussion regarding links and the Danish online media.

The panel consisted of Kasper Heine from law firm Bender von Haller Dragsted (BvHD), Anders Lassen from Digital Publicists and Infomedia, Nikolai Thyssen (who is also on Twitter) from Danish online news paper Information.dk - who has a different viewpoint on links that some of the other online media - and the discussion was moderated by Henrik Føhns (also on Twitter) from DR — the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

While I am not going to give you a summary from what was said at the discussion (I did some live coverage in Danish) I will focus on a point, that a journalist from the Danish Computerworld made and Nikolai Thyssen supported:

When you quote someone or something online and you can link to your source, you have to link.

Here in Denmark we have something called "citatretten" (roughly translated: "the right to quote") which states a fair use when it comes to quoting other articles. What if you could add the "need to link" to this?

No doubt that linking is a central part of the internet's backbone — and a great service to the readers — and maybe it's time to get our quotation rules upgraded to the online world that we are a part of?

Kim Elmose (who also blogs in Danish) have written a link manifesto that Kristine Löwe translated into English (thank you, Kristine!) — from there it was translated into Romanian — where we state six laws:

First law: We link to the sources for the data we use in our journalistic products. If we have read, seen or heard important new information on an external site - for instance about companies, people or surveys - we will link to it.

Second law: We link directly and precisely to the information we use from external sites. In this way we provide proper service to our readers rather than just linking to the front page of the external site.

Third law: We are precise in our information about where a link leads to; about who has produced the information we link to and when. The readers should know where it takes them when they follow a link.

Fourth law: We recognise that an article consisting of precise links to information that represents different angles on an issue is a journalistic product.

Fifth law: We are open to inbound links to our own news sites because we want to be an integrated part of the web’s ecosystem

Sixth law: We aspire to making it easier to link directly to our articles.

Photo from the panel discussion by Kim Elmose
Left to right: Henrik Føhns, Nikolai Thyssen, Kasper Heine and Anders Lassen

• Prime Minister: No financial aid for online newspapers, only offline (January 22, 2009) (0)
• Danish journalism students need digital knowledge (February 2, 2009) (7)
• Danish "AidOnline" ad program replaces ads on websites and causes a stir (June 4, 2009) (1)

News dona, events, links, News

The Danish School of Media and Journalism has taken some heat the last couple of years for not being updated enough when it comes to the internet and new media. When I was studying at the school (2003-2007), online journalism was not required and neither was basic computer knowledge.

But that is apparently about to change. Kristian Strøbech, who is a lecturer at the school and head of the school's recent venture into the world of new media (and has teached med in new media at the school), has spearheaded a so called "IT Curriculum" (in Danish).

The curriculum, categorized under "Research", "Presentation" and "Files", lists a series of digital requirements that the students at the school must meet. They include, among other things, RSS, spreadsheets, video and working with photos and audio files.

People interested in the project can even participate and them move even further.

Writing articles is no longer enough
This is no doubt a really great idea in a world where a journalist fresh out of school is less and less likely to be employed at a offline newspaper. And the ongoing financial crisis means that journalists need to learn more than how to write great articles.

While some take it a step further and say that journalists need to learn how to work with programming code I'm quite satisfied with the requirements from The Danish School of Media and Journalism.

Of course it's great if journalists can understand and write computer programming code (I myself now a bit of PHP and a smaller bit of JavaScript), but let's start by learning them the basics — it's about time :-)

This is not an offer to the students. IT understanding is a basic journalistic competence and in 2009 it's quite unthinkable that a newly qualified journalist can't work on the internet.

Kristian Strøbech, lecturer at The Danish School of Media and Journalism, to Berlinske's online business section, Business.dk (#)

• Should links be "need to" instead of "nice to"? (February 7, 2009) (0)
• Prime Minister: No financial aid for online newspapers, only offline (January 22, 2009) (0)
• Danish "AidOnline" ad program replaces ads on websites and causes a stir (June 4, 2009) (1)

News education, kristian strøbech, News, The Danish School of Media and Journalism