Danish Journalism

In these days one of the biggest subjects among new media persons in Denmark is the case with "AidOnline".

AidOnline is a piece of software, not unlike the Firefox extension AdBlock Plus, which prevents ads from being shown in the browser. What's different about AidOnline is that instead of hiding ads, it replaces the ads on websites with those of its partners, 12 humanitarian organizations including The Danish division of The Red Cross. Meaning that if you're using AidOnline the ads on the websites you visit will be replaced by those of AidOnline's partners.

This practice has caused a great stir, since these advertisers leech on the traffic generated by the websites and The Association Of Danish Interactive Media (FDIM) has sought to get an injunction against AidOnline, which (if granted) will force the people behind AidOnline to close it until an investigation can conclude whether the software is against Danish regulations or not.

I myself work at ekstrabladet.dk, which is the largest online newspaper in Denmark, and since my salary is — in part — paid by the ads we can sell and show on our website, I can only condemn an initiative like AidOnline. The traffic our site generates, because of content created by people who also gets part of their paychecks from the ads, is being leeched upon by these organizations — and to make matters worse, the company behind AidOnline has secured themselves a 20 percent cut of the money generated, the rest goes to the organizations.

Adblocking users might be the real losers here
Ironic enough, the people losing in the end might be the ones using adblocking software like AdBlock Plus. Why?

Well, first of all there's a counter campaign against AidOnline at stop-aidonline.dk and they have developed a script, that blocks out users with the AidOnline software installed. A side effect, however, is that users with AdBlock Plus installed also gets banned.

This is one thing. The other, bigger, issue is that some websites will realize, that they can in fact do something against people viewing their sites using adblocking software, meaning "for free".

Depending on how this turns out, with the injunction and all, one should not be to sure that we won't see a coordinated effort against the use of adblockers. And to think, it all started because of AidOnline serving ads for, among others, The Red Cross.

• 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 journalism students need digital knowledge (February 2, 2009) (7)

News ads, aidonline, News

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

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) (7)
• Danish "AidOnline" ad program replaces ads on websites and causes a stir (June 4, 2009) (1)

News aid, economy, News, politics