Danish Journalism

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) (6)

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)

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

After the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh, said that printed newspapers should recieve financial aid (while online news sites shouldn't) there has been some negative reactions.

Preben Sepstrup, an external lecturer at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus, is a co author on the midway report regarding the financial media aid in Denmark. In an article on Journalisten.dk he finds the view points of Mr Fogh strange:

The media spokespersons [from the political parties] must have a strange feeling. They have devoted two million Danish Kroner [340,000 US Dollars, 270,000 Euro] to that charting, a following analysis and proposals for new ways to arrange the media aid. They should just have asked Anders Fogh. He had the solution.

Founder of Jubii (a Danish search engine and web portal), Martin Thorborg, has criticized Mr Fogh in his podcast, saying that the print media is dying and this only extends the pain. He also underlines the fact that online media has expenses as well, even though the Danish Prime Minister doesn't appear to believe so.

Also Christian Kierkegaard, director at The Association of the Danish Specialized Press, doesn't understand Mr Fogh's timing:

First of all, it's an unfortunate statement as long as there is still an unravelling going on (the result of that will be made public in September). The most natural thing to do is to wait until the foundation has been established. The Prime Minister says that only printed media are capable of delivering news which the online media then sponges off. If you continue the media aid as it is now, you freeze development. If the net media are to be content provideres for the future and create unassisted content they need equal financial terms. It's not a forward thinking statement the Prime Minister delivers.

The entire article with the interview with Mr Kierkegaard can be read at MediaWatch.

• Prime Minister: No financial aid for online newspapers, only offline (January 22, 2009) (0)

News aid, anders fogh, economy, politics

It would be a tremendous loss if the newspapers vanished, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh told Danish journalism periodical Journalisten (The Journalist).

Therefore he wants to make sure that the Danish newspapers get financial support to secure their survival.

The same, however, doesn't apply to online newspapers. Commercial online news outlets are, according to the article in Journalisten, "left to themselves".

"We know from experience that the printed newspapers deliver most of the news for the electronic media and therefore it would be a colossal loss i the entire media picture if printed media are being forced out of the market by electronic media.

I believe that can substantiate that we for the time being have some direct and indirect aid schemes when it comes to printed media," Anders Fogh told the periodical Journalisten.

A growing number of online media sites feel it's unfair that they don'et get aid. Do they have a point in that?
»No, I actually believe they can do remarkably well online, where they enjoy a free distribution. You can, to some extend, say that the purely net based services don't have huge costs in distribution compared to the printed papers. That is exactly my point. If you have to secure fair competition you don't necessarily need the same aid schemes for the press," the Prime Minister said.

This will, from what I can make of the article, also result in that other online news/magazine sites, that don't necessarily have backing by a newspaper, won't recieve any financial aid.

• Prime Minister Fogh's online/offline view causes a stir (January 25, 2009) (0)
• Should links be "need to" instead of "nice to"? (February 7, 2009) (0)
• Danish journalism students need digital knowledge (February 2, 2009) (6)

News aid, economy, News, politics