Something hit me when I attended the press launch of Neo computer’s new range of laptops two weeks ago. The venue had four round tables, and when I arrived I noticed that only two were occupied: round one table were reporter friends of mine, those working for newspapers, while the other table had people I didn’t recognize save for one, pioneering Davao City blogger Oliver “Blogie” Robillo. I surmised that the others with him were bloggers, and this was later confirmed when a representative of Neo announced that the people in the “bloggers’ table” were volunteering to review the new laptops. The reporters on the other table protested that they, too, wanted to review the laptops, and since I had stayed at that table I began to feel a little uneasy because I had apparently sided with the bloggers.
Yes, there are sides now, and this began last year when bloggers began increasing not just in number but in stature and influence. Many bloggers were good writers and had large audiences, and one blogger (I don’t know who) made eyebrows raise when he (or she) said to the effect that bloggers were going to run traditional reporters to the ground sooner or later. A lot of angry reporters told me about this comment, and I had to say that the person was right: the internet really is the new medium, and sooner than later everyone in the media will have to have a presence there if he or she is to survive.
That brewing rift between bloggers and reporters happened last year just before I was to leave for the US for a five-week training on journalism, and so it was among my chief interests as I underwent the training. Unfortunately, there was still little to learn from US newspapers in terms of moving to the internet: by the admission of the editors of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Monterey County Herald themselves, they have still not found a profitable model of how to do newspapering in the internet. That was because the bloggers and other online journalists had already beaten them to the game, and the latter were the ones being followed by readers and being supported by sponsors.
Being a newspaperman, I don’t want that to happen. I believe things can get better for Pinoy newspapers because we can move to the internet in ways that perhaps no US paper can. American papers have been overtaken by online rivals who have taken over much of the information dissemination duties. But with internet penetration still relatively low in the Philippines, there is an opportunity to get into the action along with everyone else. According to Internet World Stats, only 16 percent of Pinoys use the internet; in contrast, 72.5 percent of the US population goes online. This means there are only about 14 million Pinoys online out of a population of about 88 million, compared with more than 220 million Americans out of a population of about 304 million.
So where US papers are facing a kind of dead end, Pinoy papers can find great opportunities if they go online immediately. With almost three-fourths of Americans using the internet, many of them are set in their ways and many websites and web personalities are already established. In the Philippines, the field is still fresh and full of possibilities, and there is no reason to think the internet will not, sooner or later, become the major source of information and entertainment for Filipinos. There is as yet no profitable model for news websites, but it will be found soon, and we had better be already present on the internet well before that happens. Bloggers are already on the job, but traditional journalists can still make it if they act now.
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jon, i hope somebody from both sides will be able to repair this.
it’s ugly and unproductive.
reporters from the fourth estate and bloggers who are from the fifth estate should help each other grow.
true. both sides have a lot to learn from each other, and it won’t help if we fight instead of cooperate.