In the beginning, there was the email

By 1995, internet was a reality to many citizens in the United States and Europe, and a great part of
newspapers
1
had already found their way online. As Barnhurst (2013:3) explains, by that time most
of these webpages reproduced mainly the content available on the printed versions of the
newspapers a procedure known as shovelware. In which concerns to the relationship with the
public
2
, by that time, email was the main channel with feedback function on these pages. It was
revolutionary, since the tool has put audience and journalists in dialogue with no mediators. The
audience was empowered to suggest reportages, state about what was written as well as also help
with new facts or advices that could enrich or rectify the news published or broadcasted by the
mainstream media institutions.
Nevertheless, internet and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have evolved a
lot since then, giving new roles and empowering even more both the audiences and journalists - as
well as creating new challenges for this last group (Barnhurst 2013:4). Nowadays media companies
can no longer be meaningfully studied in the absence of an understanding of how they relate to their
consumers (Jenkins and Deuze 2008:2). In the same proportion, audiences need to be perceived in a
holistic way, since those who traditionally consume news, now can not only interact more - and in
more complex ways - with the mainstream media but also can produce content and publish online in
social media, blogs or websites that promote independent news-related content
3
.
For this reason, this essay makes use of several studies and surveys addressed to research (1) what is
like the relationship between journalists/media and their audiences nowadays as well as (2) to what
extent Journalism practices have changed from what they used to be before the possibilities brought
by the new ICTs. These comprehensions are important to prove the premise of this paper, which
considers that the User Generated Content (UGC) does not consist in a threat to the future of the
profession of journalist, but on the contrary: it has showing to be a complement.

Influence of the new ICTs on the relationship between news organizations and their audience
In his article The Impact of Technology on Journalism, John Pavlik (2000:9) has identified four areas in
which the ICTs influence journalism: (1) how journalists do their job; (2) the content of news; (3) the

1
Even though this essay starts highlighting how newspapers went online during the 90s, it will also cover other mainstream media when
going deeper on the impact of the UGC in some companies like BBC.
2
They can also be called audience, users or consumers or even prosumers (Toffler 1980) or produsers (Bruns 2008), as cited by
Pierson & Mante-Meijer (2011:1).
3
These practices are known by many different names, as explained by the Professor Anthony R. Curtis at http://bit.ly/1dCpgWU.
Participatory journalism and citizen journalism are the most frequent in this essay.


structure of the newsroom and the news industry; and (4) the relationship between news
organizations and their publics. Unquestionably, it is easy to observe how the new empowered
public is linked to all these areas in countless ways.
In recent years, news organizations rushed onto social media on a clear endeavour to win followers,
increase traffic on their sites and most importantly: to establish relationships with their public.
Metykova discovered that European journalists interviewed in 11 countries perceived a substantial
difference in their relationship with their audience (Metykova 2008). These professionals pointed out
that the use of new technologies allowed editors to know which stories were generating most
interest among the audience (Metykova 2008:49). This feedback influences on the agenda setting of
the media and pushes the professionals on the creation of a more appealing content - in a clear
signalization that market pressures and competition had a major influence on their work, as
described by this journalist:
Low culture can now also be published front page once in a while. In the past you only
had the acronyms of the trade unions in the headlines on the front page. We think most
readers are interested in that [light news] even if they would not admit it to
themselves. Research shows this. The culture of we [journalists] determine what is
interesting, whole page articles about boring subjects is gone. Today we think more
about: Do people actually find it interesting? Can they understand it? Is it presented
accessibly enough? The newsrooms now think about all this. This is in my view an
improvement and they have to. (Metykova 2008:50)
News organization have being doing more than just encouraging the participation in order to get a
better knowledge of their audiences expectations and interests. Now they also publish their stories
and give them the status of citizen journalists when they have the chance to be witnesses to news.
The coverage on the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, for example, would have been
completely different without the role played by the audience in reporting, analysing and
understanding the related events occurred that day. The same happened in 2004 at the occasion of
the 9.1-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia and the Indian Ocean that produced a devastating
tsunami. For at least a week after the tragedy, the traditional media was fed by photos, videos and
on the scene descriptions published by local bloggers whom covered the news in real-time. Being
witnessed by ordinary people that were in the right time, in the right place, occurrences like that gain
new angles and narratives capable to enrich the content to be published by the mainstream media.
In many occasions, these circumstantial news gatherers/reporters can even change completely the


way some events were initially perceived
4
. Hence, citizen journalists must be accredited by news
organizations as well as the public in general, since they contribute largely to report important news
and can fill the gap where professional journalists are absent. On the other hand, a question raises
up: how to safeguard professional standards and to assure the veracity and credibility of the
contributions? (Pierson and Mante-Meijer 2011)
The importance of verifying UGC before publishing
Even though often criticized by their agenda or bias, the mainstream news organizations are one of
the most powerful and influential industries in the world. Being highly professionalized and
suffering pressure by advertisers or governments as well as other stakeholders -, there would be no
space for amateurism in the newsrooms. Despite the fact the increasing participation of the audience
in the processes may have given the impression that journalistic work is not too complex for non-
journalists to perform (Lowrey and Anderson 2005: 4), special skills, training and experience are
imperative in this field.
Therefore, big companies operate in function to guarantee the quality and neutrality of its
journalism, with a special effort when making use of UGC. Even in case of a scoop coming from the
audience, journalism ethics and standards request journalists to verify the information as well as the
reliability of the sources before publishing anything. In times of internet and countless technological
devices, these professional practices became even more important, taking into account the volume
of information arriving on the newsrooms. For the same reason, it is even more difficult than before
to distinguish between what is true and what is false.
By 2011, for example, a fake image showing a dead Osama bin Laden was published widely for
many news channels and tabloids around the world, in a clear lack of awareness on how to check and
publish UGC. Consequently, companies like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) are investing
on professionals to work in this field. Since 2005, the BBC maintains a Hub to cope with UGC.
According to Trushar Barot
5
, assistant editor of the Hub, rapidly changing user behaviour has meant
the team has had to be agile and constantly rethink the way it works, as well as test and adopt new
tools to help us (to verify UGC). This encounters the findings of Metykova, when professional
assured that technology-driven changes tended to be seen as empowering journalists to do their
jobs better rather than blurring the distinction between content producers and content
consumers (Metykova 2008:56).

4
As in the case of the chemical weapons in Syria, that was first reported by the population, as mentioned by the Secretary of State John
Kerry in his speech on 30
th
of August 2013. http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7

5
As seen on http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogcollegeofjournalism/posts/UGC-Source-check-and-stay-on-top-of-technology


Conclusions
According to Moretzsohn (2006), not everything published on websites or blogs can be considered
journalism even when it claims to be. It is a mistake to consider that the new possibilities for the
citizens to exercise their freedom of speech has become a thread for professional journalists. Even
though some breaking news firstly shows up on the social media sites, it is fair to say that these
contents per se are not real journalism they are more likely to be circumstantial news sources. UGC
will always rely on news coverage from mainstream organizations to produce their value which
comes on further professional analysis, commentaries, and investigation. Besides, people will keep
crossing news from these blogs or pages with mainstream news organizations to make sure the
information is reliable.
Thus, it is reasonable to assure that UGC does not replace the mainstream news organizations or
journalists, on the contrary. The new ICTs and their users helped these companies by increasing the
diversification of content, as well as giving alternative readings for what they have been published.


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