Guardian could be positive feedback with social media

Zoe Williams starts with advice not to join Twitter. Maybe the Guardian editor line is that all opinion has to be hostile to social media. But anyway she continues to suggest that " we could build an ethical code collectively" so there is some hope for the people lost in Twitter.

Previously Zoe Williams wrote about the Sunday Politics on BBC in a way that may chime with some on Twitter.

In the Corbyn era, many in the Labour party complained about the lack of balance, particularly on the Sunday Politics, the show’s weekend edition, where it was not unusual to have a panel of three journalists, one from the far right (the Express or the Telegraph), one from the “centre”, which broadly meant also supporting the government, and one from the “centre left”, who hated the leader of the Labour party more than the other two put together. 

Thing is, this "centre left" point of view might be close enough to the Guardian. Some of us can remember how Corbyn has been covered in the newspaper.

Monday, Roy Greenslade started by facing up to a few facts. He considers how much or little has changed with print journalism since the internet arrived and people like Jeff Jarvis started writing about citizen journalism.

So, how did we, the MSM professionals, react? Did we change? Did we clean up our act? Did we take those thousands of critical below-the-line comments to heart? My reading of the national morning newspapers over the past decade suggests not. Newspaper publishers and editors have continued to believe they are the political, social and cultural agenda-setters. Despite the fact that newsprint sales have fallen by more than 50% since the turn of the millennium, they have been consoled by huge online numbers.

My guess is that existing newspapers are very unlikely to change their model now. Something else could come later that realises the web is read / write. Will there be a news event as circulation falls another 50%. Possibly just lower costs, more shocking opinion.

Greenslade claims that the online alternative to MSM is now "a nasty, brutish, hysterical, intolerant mob" but I wonder if this is true? Maybe some of the people known as the people who previously paid for newspapers can continue as reasonably polite occasional retweeters of various links.