10 Comments »

• mathew says:

  November 3, 2011 at 20:06

  Hi Esther,

  I almost didn’t see your com­ment — a bit odd that you didn’t com­ment to my blog post, but over here instead…

  In any case, you haven’t exactly answered my ques­tions, so I’ll sum­marise them here for the ben­e­fit of those who didn’t see my post:

  - where are the 3 other pro­pos­als? You are pre­sent­ing them to the EP in 4 days! It’s not exactly in tune with your mis­sion (trans­parency, con­nect­ing EU affairs to the pub­lic) to not even share them online.
   – why do you call Blog­ging­por­tal a part­ner? I’m a (lapsed) Blog­ging­por­tal edi­tor. Noone remem­bers agree­ing we were part­ners
   – and, most impor­tantly!, have you done audi­ence research for these pro­pos­als? Does each have a razor-sharp focus on who the audi­ence is, and how each will offer its audi­ence some­thing orig­i­nal? Which they actu­ally need? And what hap­pens when the fund­ing dries up?

  It’s spelt out (and for­mat­ted) bet­ter on my post, but here’ll do fine.

  Because, after all, we don’t need a ded­i­cated plat­form to have this con­ver­sa­tion. Link­ing together what we have is prob­a­bly a bet­ter use of resources.

  Reply to this comment »
  • Esther Durin says:

    November 3, 2011 at 21:45

    Hi Mathew
    The pro­pos­als as they were col­lec­tively elab­o­rated will be pre­sented and debated with jour­nal­ists and MEPs on Tues­day the 8th. We decided (I’m not the only one who decide) to post, after the 8th, each pro­posal with all the com­ments and points of views expressed on the 8th, invit­ing read­ers to com­ment, com­plete, pro­pose other ideas. We will share them, with all the start­ing com­ments. I just annouced that. Maybe that was a mis­take to announce them before pub­lish­ing them. There are 10 pro­pos­als. The 8th is a step, as was the first phys­i­cal debate which took place in IHECS on Decem­ber 1st 2010, where was elab­o­rated the White paper in sup­port of civic and social Euro­pean jour­nal­ism. This one focused on the start­ing analy­sis and the 50 par­tic­i­pants agreed on 35 ideas of pro­pos­als ( the ideas, very few devel­oped, actu­ally pre­sented on the web­site. The last year was ded­i­cated to sub­mit those pro­pos­als to other journalists/NGOs and we met many peo­ple. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the result of this process. I’m not Social Euro­pean Jour­nal­ism but only a coor­di­na­tor of a dia­logue. The web­site was just refreshed and the White paper which was pre­sented dur­ing one year (1st step) will be replaced by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for com­ments. The idea is to progress col­lec­tively on proposals.

    Con­cern­ing the Blog­ging Por­tal, I totally apol­o­gise. The logo was present on the old web­site (cre­ated by another col­league), with oth­ers logos, with­out men­tion of the nature of the link. It appeared on the new theme with our part­ners. Clear that we are not ! Deleted

    Finally, all the par­tic­i­pants built the pro­pos­als shar­ing their expe­ri­ence of their audi­ence. We involved espe­cially young peo­ple, with our aca­d­e­mic net­works. The analy­sis of the White paper, that I will post in a few min­utes in the blog menu, with the tab “start­ing points”, served as basis for the proposals.

    Thanks Mathew. I offer you to com­ment the ten pro­pos­als when they will be pub­lished ( starts the 9th)

    Reply to this comment »
    • mathew says:

      November 4, 2011 at 09:53

      Thanks for all these clarifications.

      I guess my ques­tions will have to wait until you pub­lish your pro­pos­als for Com­mon Peo­ple like us to see, once the great and good of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment have had their say. As I said ear­lier, it’s not exactly the most trans­par­ent process I’ve ever seen…

      Reply to this comment »
      • Esther Durin says:

        November 4, 2011 at 11:42

        Please read our his­tory and read what I answered to one of the three ways to dis­cuss you have cho­sen in the same time…
        In 2010, first col­lec­tive work of more than 50 per­sons like you and me ( journalists/ students/ NGO rep­re­sen­ta­tives) => the analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion and first ideas, posted on SEJ. In 2011, the dia­logue con­tinue with those who want. We already were reg­is­tered in Blog­ging por­tal. Forum on our web­site, mails, meet­ings, tel=> all peo­ple who wanted par­tic­i­pated. End of 2011, we have 10 pro­pos­als elab­o­rated. The forum is closed. A nat­ural next step is to present them to MEPs. Because we can elab­o­rate all the pro­pos­als we want. If we don’t shake the Euro­pean insti­tu­tions, noth­ing will hap­pen…
        The project should have stopped here .

        But we decided that 2012 will be a third step to dis­cuss again the pro­pos­als and make them progress. So we will use the same trans­parency.
        Thanks Mathew.

        Reply to this comment »
      • Esther Durin says:

        November 4, 2011 at 11:50

        For an overview of one of our 2010 big meet­ings (in French) : http://www.ihecs.be/upload/international/bdv36pages.pdf

        Reply to this comment »
        • mathew says:

          November 4, 2011 at 14:10

          Hi, I just reacted to your com­ment on my post, and now see this.

          Totally agree to not have two con­ver­sa­tions in 2 places (wasn’t my idea). Given that we are dis­cussing this project, the right place is here, so I’ll forego the traf­fic and com­ments on my blog ;-(

          As I said on my com­ment:
           – thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tions
           – best of luck with the pre­sen­ta­tion to the EP
           – pre­pare a thicker skin!

          Now let’s con­tinue the con­ver­a­tion here!
        • Esther Durin says:

          November 4, 2011 at 14:46

          Thanks Mathew !
          No prob­lem
• mathew says:

  November 4, 2011 at 15:31

  Start­ing a new thread, and a very brief one — just a few sug­ges­tions to get your site into shape in time for the EP pre­sen­ta­tion, in case you really are inter­ested in hav­ing an online con­ver­sa­tion here about the proposals.

  Add the ‘sub­scribe to com­ments by email’ func­tion to this site, wher­ever you pro­vide a com­ment func­tion. If you’re using Word­Press or Dru­pal, this should be the eas­i­est thing in the world to add.

  This allows any­one — par­tic­u­larly those who make com­ments — to be informed by email when­ever any­one else adds a com­ment (e.g., a reply) to the same post (sub­scrip­tions are post-specific).

  It really is prob­a­bly the best way of sup­port­ing a con­ver­sa­tion — cur­rently, for exam­ple, I have had to check in on this site man­u­ally to find out if you’ve responded to my lat­est comment.

  And if you’re seri­ous about encour­ag­ing a con­ver­sa­tion, then incor­po­rat­ing ‘recent com­ments’ and/or ‘most com­mented’ widget(s) into all pages is very use­ful — how are peo­ple sup­posed to know where the con­ver­sa­tion is if you don’t show them?

  A com­ments RSS feed is also a good idea, if a bit geeky.

  With over 500 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, a Twit­ter feed would seem obvi­ous, prefer­ably based on both your user­name and a hash­tag. I wouldn’t bother with a Fbook feed, though, unless you intend doing some­thing on FB next week.

  Good luck

  Reply to this comment »
  • Esther Durin says:

    November 4, 2011 at 17:39

    Thanks for those advices Mathew. You noticed I’m novice in social media. But we really want to widen again the debate, as far as pos­si­ble.
    I will fix this tonight. I apre­ci­ate your help.

    Reply to this comment »
• Esther Durin says:

  November 2, 2011 at 12:49

  Hi Mathew and thanks ! I agree with you.
  Our first gen­eral goal, with SEJ, is to develop and strenghten the Euro­pean pub­lic debate, to inform cit­i­zens about Euro­pean poli­cies, not only in spe­cialised press or as for­reign affair, but in a inte­gra­tive way, in close link with local and regional infor­ma­tion.
  Right that for that, we need first more sus­tain­able EU media. The ten pro­pos­als cho­sen will first fol­low this goal: cre­ate politic, eco­nomic and legal con­di­tions to pro­tect plu­ral­ism, not only plu­ral­ity of own­ers but a real politic and cul­tural plu­ral­ity . But beside that, that’s right that we decided to focus also on the links between jour­nal­ists and NGOs. Right that NGOs are stake­hold­ers but know­ing that, they rep­re­sent a great alter­na­tive source of Euro­pean infor­ma­tion, esp­ceially on the con­crete impact of the Euro­pean decisions/policies. A plat­form where jour­nal­ists and NGO rep­re­sen­ta­tives is for us an inter­est­ing tool.
  But I under­stand your views because many EU plat­form (dif­fer­ent) already exist, with­out real impact. And they don’t really change the con­di­tions of work of the journalists.

  We devel­oped for that a few pro­pos­als ( they are not on the web­site for the moment) like
   – make “infor­ma­tion for cit­i­zens” and not only broad­cast­ing as it is, a Ser­vice of Gen­eral Inter­est
  –Cre­ate a bal­ance between pub­lic ser­vice media, com­mer­cial media and community-based media ( as Argentina did)
  –Cre­ate a new employe­ment statute for Euro­pean cor­re­spon­dents
  …

  The other pro­pos­als con­cerns also the training

  Reply to this comment »

1 Pingbacks »

• Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil » Blog Archive » Do we need more EU platforms, or sustainable EU media? says:

  November 2, 2011 at 10:48

  […] On Novem­ber 8, MEPs will dis­cuss ’10 con­crete polit­i­cal pro­pos­als’ for cre­at­ing the Euro­pean pub­lic sphere via dig­i­tal media, devel­oped by IHECS (Insti­tut des Hautes Etudes des Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sociales) and their part­ners via Socialeuropeanjournalism.com. […]

  Reply to this pingback »