Alex Gamela looks at citizen journalism – or the lack of it – in the Portuguese media landscape

We’ve been watching a significant change in the Portuguese news media during the last few years. From national to local newspapers, radios and TV channels, everyone is building their presence online, with more or less aptitude or quality. Still, the effort is noticeable.

Portugal Diário is a exclusively online outlet that has recently gone through a deep redesign.

But this investment in new platforms of communication doesn’t mean the companies are following the latest trends, or leaving their somewhat conservative approach to the full possibilities of the web. The news websites in Portugal are mostly a repository for print content, since many don’t have exclusively online journalists, and the resources for online content are rather limited, especially as multimedia content is concerned, though slowly the tide is turning, mainly due to the efforts of major newspapers, that are trying to improve and take the step forward in online content.

This scenario, of slow and uneven development of new media content, is useful to explain why the interactivity between media and users is practically nonexistent. Many still don’t grasp the concept of participative/citizen journalism and community, but companies and newsroom managements aren’t the only ones to blame, since there are other factors to consider:

- Portugal has a low newspaper reading index, and despite an increase in the last years, it is still one of the lowest in Europe;

- the Portuguese, as a people, usually aren’t civically engaged;

- journalists, as a class, are quite protective about their job;

- there is no specific training for professional journalists regarding community management, content moderation, outsourced content;

So, if news information still runs downriver, it’s because there’s not only a structural problem, but also a passive-aggressive attitude towards citizen journalism: passive on the citizen part, aggressive on the journalists that defend their status as news bearers with tooth and nail, even if most don’t take any effort to understand the new reality.

To vouch for these changes and current mindset, I created a small survey in which I was trying to understand the conditions and openness of online media to citizen contribution. It was divided in 4 parts:

• company characteristics,
• main types of content and sources,
• forms of user participation, and
• a short opinion on citizen journalism.

This survey was sent to about 50 newspapers, TV and radios with online news features, sizing from national media groups to local companies. The response was baffling.

A quarter of the email addresses available for contact with the website or newsroom’s management were useless, and even after further attempts inviting the remaining ones that worked, only four companies replied and filled out the form.

The results are, therefore, inconclusive. But this is a good example to show how receptive most newsrooms and companies are to outside stimulation, even if it wasn’t only for the fact that the ones that replied are amongst those who are working to develop their presence online, in a well-thought-through, sustainable way, and embracing the new challenges posed by hyper-communication, while the vast majority is selling pigs in a poke.

Two newspapers (one national, the other local), one online news outlet and a TV channel responded to the survey.

• The local newspaper was the least resourceful, with no exclusively online journalists, against the online outlet with over 30 workers.
• The local newspaper had 30 to 50 thousand visits, against the over 330 thousand claimed by the TV channel’s online newsroom.
• All of them prioritized text over video, audio and photography, being video the less used format, except on the TV website, for obvious reasons.
• None used citizen or users as a source, sticking to the journalists’ investigation and agencies feed, although users’ images and videos were welcome.
• All are expecting to open their website to further user collaboration, and when asked about the future of citizen journalism, the best answer was “interactivity is one of the factors that increases the number of visits,(…) and the visibility and acknowledgement of the brand”. This line of thought is still a needle in the Portuguese news haystack.

The most recent reports on citizen journalism in the USA (State of the News Media 2008) show a decrease in user’s participation, though there are new websites and features popping up everyday, appealing to news readers to develop contents and create a tighter relationship with the online editions.

In Portugal, all the news related to media websites’ development is around announcing more multimedia and interactive features, for broadband usage: more video, more comments, more space for users’ opinions and input.

With very few notable exceptions, nothing is really changing; the main difference is that the contributions accepted by media companies are now being sent over the internet, instead of regular mail.

Portuguese users are actively creating their own media, such as blogs and podcasts; and commenting on the news websites, or sending small videos and pictures is still enough for most of them.

And on the day I’m writing this, Público presented a feature that links a news article to the blogs that refer to it, which may mean that the future is not necessarily in the embedding of citizen content, but by promoting the exchange of contents between corporate and citizen media.

But, apart from those small advances to integrate users in the building of the news landscape, there is nothing we may call citizen journalism in Portugal.

The reasons to proclaim citizen journalism as a part of the future of news media may be honest or pure marketing, but the fact is that it doesn’t rely solely on the companies’ shoulders. The main promoters of this movement must be the citizens themselves, and they should be the leading force in changing the face of corporate news, recreating the agenda setting, humanizing and lending depth to news content. The media outlets just have to be ready to accept that.

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After writing this article I even questioned how the local press is slowly commiting suicide. Assymetry is the main characteristic of our media landscape, which kind of follows the rest of the national economic and industrial scenery. The challenge is huge, and I don’t see many people facing it or even taking it seriously, with a few notable exceptions. But this setting is not ours exclusively.

Alex Gamela is the OJB’s Portugal correspondent. He blogs at O Lago.

Just to let you know that the News Interactivity Index now includes newspapers from Norway (thanks Kristine Lowe), France, the Netherlands and the US. You can use it to compare any two newspapers or country averages. The following countries are now covered:

• France
• Hungary
• Macedonia
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Switzerland
• UK
• US

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been turning the Online Journalism Blog into a group blog. For our first project we have taken Jo Geary’s news interactivity index, and applied it Europe-wide, creating an ‘interactivity index’ of newspapers across European countries – at the moment: the UK, Spain, Portugal, Macedonia, Hungary, Poland and Switzerland…

Not just that, but we’ve made the index itself interactive. Specifically, Nicolas Kayser-Bril has created this PHP object which allows you to compare two selected newspapers or countries.

The team so far is as follows: UK and France: Nicolas Kayser-Bril; Switzerland: Nico Luchsinger; Portugal and Spain: Alex Gamela; Poland: Marek Miller; Macedonia: Darko Buldioski; Hungary: Molnar Emil; Netherlands: Wilbert Baan.

If you want to help add information on one or more of your country’s newspapers you can do so here – you’ll need to ask Nicolas for a password: nicolas (at) observatoiredesmedias.com.

More newspapers will continue to be added, and there are other graphical tricks to come.

You can also embed this widget on your own blog with the following code:

<iframe src=”http://tinyurl.com/5c9vmy” frameborder=”0″ height=”605″ scrolling=”no” width=”415″></iframe>

In Portugal you do. A Portuguese journalist has written with the following information as a prelude to a question:

“In Portugal there is a comission that grants journalistic licences of all sorts: for freelancers, collaborators, full time journalists. This licence puts its owner under a special condition before the law and finance.

“To get one of those licences I need my employer to declare I’m working for them; then I need two licensed journalists to sign a term of responsibility on my behalf; I need also a supervisor inside the company I’m working at to follow my work during a training period; this training period is variable, and the minimum is one year of “evaluation” for those who – like me – have a degree in Journalism.”

So here’s the question:

• In which countries does a journalist need a licence?
• Who and how grants it?
• Is it really needed?
• And why?

I would love to know your own experiences.

Alex Gamela talks to António Granado, editor of the online edition of Público, a reference newspaper in Portugal, as they relaunch their website.

Público have always been ahead as far as online presence is concerned, and recently the newsroom created a video team, as well as launching a redesigned website. In this short interview, we tried to ask a very busy António about his views on online journalism, a subject he discusses in his blog PontoMedia. Granado is also a lecturer at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and is one of the best Portuguese minds dealing with the new media issues.

What is the situation of the online journalism in Portugal? Does it exist?

Online journalism in Portugal is taking its first steps. The investment in this area is still minimum, and the media are now taking a different look to the possibilities opened by the Internet.

What changes are currently happening as digital journalism is concerned?

PÚBLICO debuts this week (November 19th) with videos on its website – we have established a five-person team to make them. We are also changing our homepage to give more prominence to vídeo, and we will be getting more pictures and graphics. The Economy Channel is now assured permanence by the economy journalists, which is a first step on the right path.

What is the audience of Público’s online edition?

We have no data that allow us to perceive who the Público.pt readers exactly are. Anything I’d say would be my opinion and not a fact.

As a teacher, do you believe that the preparation given to journalism students at universities takes into account the new reality?

It is clear that most universities aren’t preparing the students for the new realities. For example, there’s still a separation between the teaching of written, radio and TV journalism, which is an outdated 20th century concept.

Are Portuguese journalists, in general, ready to embrace new media?

Portuguese journalists aren’t prepared for new media, because new media are making their way into the newsrooms quite slowly, and sometimes, in the worst way. Journalists must be trained for the tasks demanded by the new journalism, you have to do it with the journalists’ support and not against them. In many places this isn’t being done.

Is there a citizen journalism in Portugal?

I don’t think there’s any yet.

A few years back some said that there was no future in online editions. This year El País’ director said that if he started the newspaper now, he would do it only online. What sort of mentality prevails in the Portuguese editorial market – and what needs to be changed?

It’s a backward mentality. There’s still fear of the digital. People don’t post news online so they won’t “burn” paper scoops, there’s no investment in multimédia because, deep inside, people think that maybe the newspaper crisis isn’t here to stay. Managers’ attitudes towards multimedia must be changed (the small moves aren’t enough, bigger steps are required); newspapers’ mentality must be changed, they can’t go on thinking that a news story lasts 24 hours; journalists’ minds must be changed, they must understand that their main mission is to inform in any way possible, and not to sell newspapers on the day after the events.

Journalists have this strong sense of self, maybe something comparable to doctors, because there’s a notion of power. What will happen to this sense with the participation of readers? Is citizen journalism really journalism?

Journalists must get used to the participation of readers. Jay Rosen calls them “the people formerly known as the audience”, because now they can and want to participate more in the news process. Journalists must understand this radical change and adapt to it. Citizen journalism sometimes is, and sometimes isn’t, journalism. As we all know, there’s also journalism that isn’t journalism, and that ashames us all.

What does the future journalist look like?

The journalist of the future is someone who can look at a story and tell it in the most effective way. Who cares more about the readers and not as much about the sources

And the reader of the future?

The reader of the future is the reader of now. “He knows more than I do” as Dan Gillmor says. He wants and he can participate more. He’s not happy with text only. He wants news immediately, on the platform he’s using, and not on any other that is imposed to him.

The setting for Portuguese online journalism may look desolate, but change is inevitable. Old habits die hard, and the situation in Portugal is rather similar to many other countries. It’s a slow process that has to be made, just like Granado said: “with the journalists’ support and not against them”.

Pictures by Sandra Oliveira

I’ve just had an email from a journalist in Portugal, who describes an all-too-familiar scenario:

“On Portuguese public TV there is a show called “Journalist’s Club”. The moderator was interviewing the director of the Portuguese news agency LUSA. He asked: is citizen journalism journalism? The director of LUSA said ‘Yes’ with some examples. The moderator was insistingly, to say the least, denying this possibility, giving the final comparison: “The act of journalism is like a medical act” – i.e. journalists are like doctors – they hold a power. This is the opinion of a majority of professionals here in Portugal and I bet in many other countries too.”

It amazes me that people are still debating whether X or Y is journalism. Apart from anything else, it seems such a pointless debate. Why does it matter what you call it?

There’s the comment-fueller for today – I’d love to know your opinions.