In Enjeux-Les Echos (December 2004), a fascinating interview of Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, and the man behind the blog "PressThink – Ghost of democracy in the media machine" (http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/). Jay Rosen was invited at Davos 2004 to talk about the weblog revolution.
Before the Internet, newspapers, radio and television emerged and found their place without threatening each other. But Jay Rosen thinks that two major changes are under way :
- the end of the financial barrier to entry: anyone today can produce his own music/video/written content and make it available over the internet;
- the end of the editorial barrier: chief editors who acted as media temple key holders do not control anything anymore when bloggers can publish freely and instantly.
For Jay Rosen, weblogs represent a huge challenge for media groups, but the latter still ignore them. Since 2002 for instance, the New-York Times has more readers through its internet version than through the paper version, but the newspaper still thinks of itself as a paper media with an Internet extension.
Seen from France, how could such thesis not remind us of the financial troubles of historic media such as Le Monde or Liberation ?