The Guardian reports today:

News International chairman Les Hinton has accused “journalists” of
amateurism, misrepresentation and failing to emulate the standards of
traditional news organisations.

Using the example of coverage of this year’s hurricane in New Orleans -
where he said bloggers were responsible for “bad information”, including reports
of unrest and rape that were not later substantiated - he called on journalists
to maintain their status as experts to bolster trust among readers.

Hinton is basically asserting that the error rate in so-called citizen journalism (blogging and the like) is higher than the error rate in so-called expert journalism. I wonder if that’s true?

The Guardian continues its report:

One problem newspapers were facing was that a “freeloading generation” used
to getting content for nothing were harder to convert into paying customers,
[Hinton] said.

“Most of what they want to know is free. You have to make a pretty good
case to them to pay �220 a year for a conventional newspaper.”

Comment: Those are some pretty ‘in-your-face’ statements by Hinton. Reminds me of the scene in Citizen Kane when Charles Foster Kane prints his Declaration of Principles and Jedediah Leland asks to keep the declaration as a souvenir, doubting Kane’s ability to stick to the principles. Kane, of course, later violates his principles…