France: Youth ignore newspaper requests for protest photos; turn to Internet
Posted by John Burke on March 20, 2006 at 1:12 PM
Over the past 10 days, two French dailies, Libération and Le Monde, have been soliciting readers to submit photos of the ongoing protests over a labor law that has aroused France’s university student population and unions. But instead of sending their images to the traditional press, many French people are turning to the popular photo sharing website, Flickr.
French journalist and blogger Gilles Klein has the skinny: as of March 19, Libération, which began asking for citizen contributions on March 10, had no amateur images posted; Le Monde, which launched its initiative on March 15 was averaging about 8 images a day.
Flickr, on the other hand, has over 1,500 images tagged under CPE (the acronym of the law), obviously an enormous amount more than the images submitted to the two newspapers.
So what does this mean?
Although he praises the two dailies for attempting participatory journalism, Jeff Mignon of 5W Mignon Media suggests that most of the protesting youth weren’t even aware of the papers’ offer because they either read very little or not at all the print or online versions of the traditional press. If this is true, he asks, “Should newspapers renounce their efforts to attract young readers?”
Giving up completely certainly won’t help the situation. But for those with a pessimistic view of the future of newspapers, it may seem like it is too late for traditional media to capture and impress themselves upon youth while they are still young, instilling that daily reading habit crucial to newspaper survival… at least under current business models.
Sources: Media Café, Le Phare (both in French)
Flickr, on the other hand, has over 1,500 images tagged under CPE (the acronym of the law), obviously an enormous amount more than the images submitted to the two newspapers.
So what does this mean?
Although he praises the two dailies for attempting participatory journalism, Jeff Mignon of 5W Mignon Media suggests that most of the protesting youth weren’t even aware of the papers’ offer because they either read very little or not at all the print or online versions of the traditional press. If this is true, he asks, “Should newspapers renounce their efforts to attract young readers?”
Giving up completely certainly won’t help the situation. But for those with a pessimistic view of the future of newspapers, it may seem like it is too late for traditional media to capture and impress themselves upon youth while they are still young, instilling that daily reading habit crucial to newspaper survival… at least under current business models.
Sources: Media Café, Le Phare (both in French)
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