Internet to carve own market away from media [Archives:2005/901/Local News]

DUBAI- United Arab Emirates- Dec. 7- The shoptalk on journalism focused on how to have bloggers, digital tools, and the speed of new media that changed newsrooms around the world.

Ammar Bakker, Director of Al-Arabiya.net has acknowledged the role of new media, saying that the internet has changed the Arab region, and the mainstream media has to make way for the internet. He said that although it is not possible to undermine the role of the mainstream media in reporting accurate and objective news and information to the public, citizen journalism, i.e. the participation of the public in shaping the news through sources such as the internet and community newspapers, which have changed the face of mainstream media as we know it.

Eric Case, Program Manager of Blogger – Google agreed with the above thought and said that technologies such as blogging have been given an opinion which goes beyond the mainstream media and its coverage of important international events, which was demonstrated during tsunami last year where a lot of people got a better perspective of the happening through personal accounts from blogs of people on the scene.

Pete Clifton, Head of Interactive News, BBC, said that during the last July bombings in London, the BBC coverage of the events was transformed by people's feedback with the BBC receiving over 20.000 e-mails, including pictures taken after the blast. This contribution became central to the coverage and was a live example of citizen journalism in action.

John Clippinger, Senior Fellow, The Berkan Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School said that the Internet provides a very accountable and open system with technologies such as blogging, giving a voice to the people. He said that although the nature of the technology and how it evolves in the next few years is yet to be seen.

He added that the mainstream media will change dramatically in the next few years with new kinds of media companies emerging such as Yahoo.com.

The Arab and World Media Conference-200- was held at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai under the theme “Getting it Right””. It is jointly organized by the Arab Thought Foundation and Dubai Press Club. It concluded yesterday the 6th of December 2005.
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