Zeit Online editor-in-chief Wolfgang Blau and Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger agreed on the importance of collaborative journalism at their papers at a debate in Berlin last week. Zeit Online, website of German weekly Die Zeit, hosted video clips of the debate on its blog.

Asked by Blau how he had brought the Guardian to a point where it was a "path breaker for online journalism around the world," Rusbridger replied that this was achieved by "a mixture of inspiring people and terrifying them." The decline in print readership is frightening, he said, and people see the necessity to enhance their online offerings. Also, however, "I think it's easy to inspire people," and he described how the Guardian has seen huge momentum in innovation around different areas of the paper.

Both Rusbridger and Blau noted how their journalists keenly use Twitter as a collaborative tool. There is a growing understanding, Rusbridger said, that "if we try to collaborate with other resources and people who maybe be readers or may be experts, we can do it better."

"Twitter is irreplaceable for us now," said Blau, "we benefit from it every minute." He described that when the paper relaunched its site, "within minutes" users were pointing out on Twitter that certain browser configurations weren't working. When an article is retweeted, he said that the journalists sometimes notice that a reader on Twitter has come up with a better headline than the original. "Twitter is a big practice ground for collaborative journalism," he added.

Rusbridger expressed great enthusiasm for collaborative journalism, commenting that "I'm so excited about journalism at the moment. What we're doing is journalistically so superior to what we were able to do in the past." Describing journalism as traditionally being kept from its readers by a wall, he said that he thinks the most successful journalists now are those who are "completely taking that wall down," and carrying out journalism that is more like a fluid conversation. "The idea of a story that is written and then stops is disappearing," he said: now stories don't end but often have a very active 'after life.' The question now is how to make use of this after life?

Blau noted that there was a big misunderstanding a few years ago with regards UCG which he now sees repeated with collaborative journalism: the assumption that this is a way to cut costs and produce journalism with lower expenses. In fact, he stressed, it costs more, as it means "retraining your journalists, new skillls, it means extra resources for validating and fact-checking what is coming in from readers."

On the issue of funding, Blau asked Rusbridger how he thought journalism could be funded in the future and what business model the Guardian might adopt if it didn't have the support of the Scott Trust. "The honest answer is that nobody knows," Rusbridger said, and "let's not pretend that anybody does know." He pointed out that the Guardian made £40 million from its digital operations last year and thatonline display revenues were up 50% year-on-year, and although this was not yet anywhere near enough to support the paper's operations, the rise in revenue was steep. However, he admitted that "being an economic realist I think it is likely that we're going to have to operate with a smaller staff in future as the money is not going to be there in the medium to long term."

Rusbridger has been vocal in the past about his belief in allowing journalism to flourish on the open web where stories can spread far and wide in practically no time at all, and bounce off each other, link to each other and attract a response. This contrasts with News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch's attitude that online content must be paid for online: three of Murdoch's UK properties, the Times, Sunday Times and News of the World are now behind complete online paywalls. Will one of these approaches prevail, or will they complement one another?

Source: Die Zeit