Carta editors: “Flattr revenues in June: Thank you!”
201,22 € for group blog Carta (#6 on Rivva)

Flattr seems to be on its way to become a convincing business model for blogs.

Carta also has a post up with German Flattr charts for June, listing the most-flattred articles over the last month, saying:

Among the most-flattred topics in June were among others: Flattr, football, media critique, related rights ["Leistungsschutzrecht"]. Comparing the amount of flattr clicks with the previous month one can barely see a difference. The amount of clicks on top articles has only slightly increased. This means the growth of Flattr has decreased in June. The first Flattr hype seems over.

Markus Beckedahl: Flattr revenues in June
576,53 € for group blog netzpolitik.org (#7)

That’s more than I expected. We will see if it continues like this and if more Flattr users will lead to higher revenues. I am still not convinced that Flattr could refinance a blog like this in the medium term. That will need a mix of revenues, combining parameters like Flattr, advertising, donations and other stuff like giving talks.

Sebastian Heiser: Flattr earns us 998,50 Euros in June
998,50 € for newspaper taz (#15)

My personal impression from our Flattr balance in June is that readers don’t reward the most expensive investigation the most, not the best coverage and not the articles with the best background information from our specialized editors. The most rewards go to articles which aim at the favorite enemies of our readers: Neo-Nazis, high nobility, the newspaper “Bild”, the liberal-conservative federal government.

Jens Matheuszik: What Flattr earned Pottblog & Co. in June
14,48 € for blog Pottblog (#38)

There’s one thing that irks me about Flattr: I have written [...] an article which I think is very helpful for a certain audience [...]. This article, which also contained a Flattr button, also got linked to, among others by a blog with a Flattr button. Interestingly, this other blog, which actually just paraphrased my post and linked to me, got more Flattr clicks than the actual post. That’s somehow as if on pay-TV I would pay more for the preview of a good movie than for the actual movie.

Stefan Niggemeier: Now I’m flatt
352,89 for blog Stefan Niggemeier (#14)

That’s more than I expected [...]. 100 Euros for an article like my commentary on the “She said ‘Reichsparteitag’” hysteria is a better royalty than many newspapers would have paid for an article.

Some other major blogs have reported their revenues as well:

law blog (#27): 247,68 €
iPhoneBlog.de (#232): 202,10 €
Blogwerk (publisher of several blogs): 201,17 €

I myself made 7,42 € in revenues from Flattr this month through six articles on i like patterns. A post reporting revenues and reactions of German bloggers like this one got most clicks (16) – probably because it was used by Flattr as credentials. But these 16 clicks only meant 2,76 € in revenues – while two clicks for my article on the campaign against the 2011 census already earned me 2,36 €. All in all, I made 0,26 € per flattr – an average reported by others as well.

From the first full month of Flattr experience we can already draw some trends. Of course, one important question is whether Flattr continues to expand. While Carta sees the service’s grow already in a decline, I would draw a more cautious and complex conclusion by looking at the revenues reported by two of the biggest earners, netzpolitik.org and taz. Netzpolitik is read mostly by an extremely ‘Net-savvy audience, while taz.de, online version of a leftist newspaper, probably has a less specialized readership.

Netzpolitik.org reports about 577 € for June, compared to 39 € on the last two days of May, i.e. revenues stayed at about 20 Euros per day. Taz.de on the other hand made nearly 1000 € in June, whereas they had reported only 143,55 € for the previous month’s twelve final days, i.e. taz.de about tripled their revenues in June. I would argue that what we see is Flattr growing not at the core (‘Net-savvy early adopters), but on the edges (less avant-garde readership). That’s not to say that we already see a mainstreamization of Flattr, but a diversification among its users.

The other big issue is whether Flattr revenues are just. Or, to use a less moralizing phrasing: Which articles (and which topics) get flattred? The quotes above already give some answers to this question: Readers flattr opinionated commentary rather than well-researched articles. Posts dealing with flattr get a lot of reward, but this trend seems to decline. Hot topics, especially those popular with the ‘Net-savvy media avant-garde, are leading the charts.

The statistics of the articles I wrote for Spreeblick only partially mirror this image:

49 – Activists plan constitutional complaint against 2011 census (31.05.)
20 – Governors sign media protection of minors treaty (11.06.)
14 – Campaign against 2011 census launched (10.06.)
12 – On the App Store or not on the App Store, that’s the question (09.06.)
11 – An alternative to Facebook (18.05.)
9 – The digital future of Europe (19.05.)
9 – EFF design basic rights for users of Facebook and co. (20.05.)
9 – Does Burma work on nuclear weapons? (04.06.)
8 – Those writing about environmental protection live in danger (24.06.)
7 – Gallo report: A victorious battle for copyright dogmatism (02.06.)
7 – Video interview with Eleanor Saitta: Before the surveillance camera, some people are more equal (08.06.)

Another five articles got flattred six or less times, but none of the posts I wrote for Spreeblick since the introduction of Flattr did not receive any reward.

My most-flattred article deals with the upcoming 2011 census (here’s an updated English version). It required relatively much research, but was kind of scoop – I was the first to report on the planned constitutional complaint. On spots #2 and #3 follow news articles on current political affairs, two opinion pieces on Apple’s App Store and Facebook rank 4th and 5th. There is no clear pattern visible in this ranking (which is not based on sufficient data of course).

My own articles aside, opinion pieces seem to fare well with Flattr users. Many seem to use the button as kind of a way of saying thank you to authors who expressed what they were already thinking. I, personally, try to reward writers for articles which offer me an unusual perspective, new insights – or an enjoyable phrasing. How do you use the Flattr button?

Environmental reporters under threat

A panel including investigative reporters from from China, Pakistan, Egypt and Haiti as well as free speech advocates from RSF and CPJ was devoted to the threats professional as well as citizen journalists encounter when writing about local environmental issues. Reporters without Borders just have a report out on this, “High-risk subjects: Deforrestation and Pollution”, which provides a good world-wide overview of the issue.

Writing about environmental issues often gets people into conflict with companies and local government, which are in many cases strongly intermingled. A Moroccan activist told me that he keeps his anonymity not out of fear of the government, but because companies would not employ him if they found out about his commitment to preserve the Mediterranean environment. This has been the fate of Egyptian Tamer Mabrouk, who was fired from his job and fined about 5.000 Euros for blogging about his employer’s illegal waste-dumping.

Liu Jianqiang, probably China’s most influential investigative journalist, told a similar story. His reports on environmental issues such as genetically manipulated seeds have attracted a lot of attention. Prime minister Wen Jiabao himself is said to have stopped work on the “Tiger Leaping Gorge” dam when Liu broke news that it lacked official approval. Yet he lost his job at the prestigious Southern Weekly over an unauthorised interview with the Washington Post – an excuse to get rid of a journalist who had angered influential companies and local government with his stories, Liu says.

While CPJ’s Frank Smyth told the harrowing story of Russian newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who was nearly beaten to death for reporting critically on plans to build a commercial centre in a forrest area, RSF’s Jean-François Julliard warned that “economic pressure is a strong threat”. Newspapers are facing losses in ad sales if they write articles critical of major local companies, and journalists or bloggers are living in fear to lose their jobs.

Besides violence and economic pressure, legal procedures are another way to bar environmental reporters from doing their work. Smyth reported that Lucio Flavio Pinto, founder of the Brazilian magazine Jornal Pessoal, did not dare to attend the Global Media Forum. Pinto is currently facing more than 30 lawsuits brought against him by companies. He does not want to leave Brazil out of fear that courts could rule against him in one of these lawsuits in his absence.

To avoid these threats, Liu advised his colleagues to fact-check their reports with the utmost accuracy so as to not allow their opponents to legitimately challenge their work. Rina Saeed Khan, from Pakistan, “as a developing country journalist, you have to make as many international links as possible”, saying that international pressure was important to free persecuted journalists.

My German readers may also be interested in an article I wrote for Spreeblick about this issue, “Wer über Umweltschutz schreibt, lebt gefährlich”.

Listen to the session’s audio recording on SoundCloud.

Two projects on solutions to climate change

One panel, which discussed “covering climate protection and possible solutions”, showcased two interesting media projects with a positive outlook on climate change. One is run by journalists, one by activists. I’ll spare you the discussion on whether there is a difference between journalism and activism (and if yes, what is it?).

Global Ideas, produced by Deutsche Welle, is devoted to “showcasing people & projects from around the world taking action against climate change.” Their weekly six-minute videos feature entrepreneurs mostly in the energy sector (e.g. “Biomass briquettes in India”. All the content is available in five languages (English, German, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese). Their communication efforts on Twitter are not really successful yet, but they say they forward any request they get to the respective organization.

OurWorld 2.0, a UN University project based in Tokyo, “reports on and analyzes innovations in order to inspire people to learn” in four categories – climate, oil, food and biodiversity. It’s a webzine (about one profound article every two days) with occasional videos produced at quite a high quality. Their world-wide aim is visible in a map showing the location of the webzine’s subjects. OurWorld 2.0 is published in both English and Japanese.

Listen to the session’s audio recording on SoundCloud.

Ushahidi wins the Best of Blogs award

Crisis mapping tool Ushahidi was awarded the prize as “best weblog” at this year’s BOBs. I must say I don’t really understand why – their blog is very informative, but to me it seems as if the jury rather chose Ushahidi as a platform and organization. Nevertheless, it certainly is a very interesting project.

Erik Hersman said that while the technology behind Ushahidi wasn’t new, its use is. While “technology will always be only be ten percent of the solution”, these ten percent allowed them to “disrupt the status quo” in the aid sector, which he called the “huminatarian-industrial complex” during the press conference. Those of you following Ushahidi more closely might notice that Erik perceives the importance of these 10% vastly different from his colleague Ory Okolloh, who recently cautioned: “Don’t get too jazzed up! Ushahidi is only 10% of solution.”

Finally, some general words on the Global Media Forum

All in all, I really enjoyed Deutsche Welle’s conference. Not so much because of the panels – I only managed to see a few – but because of the great participants. The conference had an extremely multicultural atmosphere, aided by the attendance of Deutsche Welle’s international staff. I finally had the opportunity to meet Jillian C. York, who won the best English blog award for her project Talk Morocco, a blog featuring several well-known Moroccan bloggers’ articles in monthly single-topic “forums” (check out their latest edition on citizen media, including a highly critical article by my friend Mahdi).

But I was also disappointed about some things I heard. On the “dangers” panel, Jean-François Julliard did not caution to admit that in the field of environmental reporting in non-free countries, bloggers are more in advance than traditional journalists. But other panels, focusing on the role of journalists in times of climate change, were full of the ignorance of professionals, who kept up the image of journalists as reporters of nothing but the matter of fact, which prompted a Norwegian colleague to say that “this kind of objectivism has survived only in journalism”.

Alex Kirby, a veteran BBC environmental reporter, moderated the first session I attended, entitled “Who will fuel our future? A fundamental debate between rivalling energy sources.” In the beginning, Kirby said to the announcer: “You called me a gentleman twice, but I am a journalist and these two don’t go together.” Indeed, I twittered, a journalist should court nobody. Yet the session proved to be an advertising space for such controversial companies as the Desertec project, with almost no criticism.

In fact, Deutsche Telekom’s Ignacio Campino dared to propose that journalists team up with companies to “educate” the “customers” on the issue of sustainability. All this at a broadcaster’s conference. Do I even have to ask to which level journalism must have degenerated to make this shameful proposal possible?

All the sessions are up as audio recordings on SoundCloud.

Since I haven’t seen much buzz around Flattr outside of Germany, I asked my Twitter followers why they think the service hasn’t taken off elsewhere. While Christian Kreutz criticized the invitation phase as making no sense because Flattr “need a mass right from start”, company evangelist Eileen Tso added that the service’s adoption by leftist German newspaper taz “took it to another level”. Jürgen Eichholz saw Peter Sunde’s talk at re:publica 10 (video, see also this interview with dctp.tv) as crucial.

Peter himself eventually sided with Jürgen, also pointing out that he’s living in Berlin. So there seems to be a consensus that a talk at re:publica was helpful to kickstart Flattr into the German blogosphere. Indeed, the conference is not only the biggest one aiming mostly at bloggers (and, at least in my eyes, more open and welcoming than both other Internet community events, such as the Chaos Communication Congress and typical media conferences), but also organized by the people (and companies) behind two of Germany’s most prominent blogs, netzpolitik.org and Spreeblick (I have interned at, and write for, both).

These two blogs are also among the first to implement Flattr, alongside many other major (and smaller, of course) blog and some newspapers. On June 1, Flattr paid out the first monthly revenues to the participators. Many of them have responded by publishing the figures, in general saying that they are posivitely surprised. Below are some figures and statements, alongside some rankings derived from the “Leitmedien” index of Rivva, an important aggregator that uses links and tweets as indicators of relevance.

Tim Pritlove: I am flattered
208,54 € for podcasts Chaos Radio Express and Not Safe For Work (not listed on Rivva)

I’m far from euphoria, but I feel that here something is growing that could well be sustainable. [...] I can only be satisfied. Reactions [from listeners] have shown me how important it is to have personal communication with your own community. [...] That’s why I’ve called my little adventure “personal media”. That’s what it is about: An extremely personal form of media production which allows for a highly personal way of consuming media. Flattr seems to be an interesting complement to this concept: Personal payment [...]. The Flattr click is more of an acknowledgement and fulfillment of an urge to thank than a payment transaction.

Johnny Haeusler: Flattr after the first 14 days
110,94 € for multi-author blog Spreeblick (#30 on Rivva)

Even though the sum positively surprises me because I expected much less it is still too early for reasonably valid judgments [...]. Flattr is generally a good idea which still needs time. And for trying it out and making it alone we owe the Flattr Swedes due respect and by the way also a fair share of the revenues.

Spreeblick has also embedded a poll asking their readers about their use of Flattr. Surprisingly, the share of those who use the service as both writers and readers (17%) is lower than the one of read-only users (18%). 37% state that they plan to join Flattr in the future, whereas only 28% have no interest in the service.

Matthias Urbach: First money from Flattr
143,55 € for newspaper taz (#14 on Rivva)

Given that taz.de is only present [on Flattr] for a mere 12 days, and given that Flattr is still in beta mode, the result meets our expectations. [...] In general rewards on Flattr were for things that our readers like to read at the moment otherwise, too. [...] At the same time it’s also eye-catching that the number of Flattr clicks is continously growing day by day.

Carta editorial office: Flattr: The first payoff
122,56 € for multi-author blog Carta (#7 on Rivva)

We are happy about so much support, which exceeds our expectations by far. [...] The system may still be in closed beta mode, it still has a few flaws and it still lacks a few desirable features, but all in all it feels ok. It keeps fascinating to watch the development, growing prevalence and acceptance – especially among “non-bloggers”.

Udo Vetter: Flattr – the first payoff
33,06 € for blog law blog (#135 on Rivva)

A rough calculation shows that each Flattr has earned me around 15 cents. [...] I had expected one, maybe two cents per click. It’s too early to make a final judgement about Flattr. After all, the service has not even finished its closed beta phase yet. But after the first numbers I still think Flattr is a good idea which deserves a chance.

Michael Seemann: Flattr – it works!
0,26 € for blog HIER

Flattr establishes a gift economy. [...] Flattring is, like blogging, making a gift. [...] From the beginning on I have set my Flattr to 20 euros a month. My own estimation of what blogs are worth for me would be more like 50 euros, but that’s currently not possible. Bummer!

Flattr is still in closed beta mode, thus you need an invite code to join. I still have some left, so if you want one send me an email to [myfirstname] at [thisdomain]. I will be especially happy to give away some invite codes to my international readers!

The idea is simple: As a Flattr user you charge your account with a small sum – five or ten bucks, maybe – which you intend to spend during a month. You can then “flattr” sites which have embedded a button, like I did. The monthly sum you have designated is then equally split among all sites you have flattered, with the company retaining a 10% fee. If you have 5 Euros to spend and click on ten different buttons, each site owner will thus receive 45 cents. If you don’t flattr anything for a month, the money you intended to spend will be donated.

Flattr is not the first service of its kind. E.g. there is Kachingle (“Social cents for digital stuff”), which works on a very similar model. But the Swedes seem to be the best player on the field, and their service has already enjoyed a certain success, at least in Germany. Many blogs, such as my former and current employers netzpolitik.org and Spreeblick, have embedded the button as well as leftist newspapers taz and Freitag.

Despite this early success, there is still a lot of doubt as to whether Flattr will eventually end up as a viable source of income for bloggers, online journalists, netlabel musicians and others who publish creative stuff on the ‘Net. Some argue that in the end, a small circle of netizens will end up flattering each other with peanuts. That’s at least a possible scenario.

But something I like about Flattr is their stress on the fact that there are no different user types in the system. If you want to embed a Flattr button on your blog, you first have to charge your own account to be able to flattr other people’s stuff. This comes from an understanding of the social web as it should be: Everybody a creator, everybody a consumer.

Enthusiasts have spoken of a new age of “prosumers” (a portmanteau from “producer” and “consumer”), as those who are engaging in this post-industrial hybrid behaviour have been called. As a matter of fact, they are still an avantgarde, at least in most of the world (South Korea seems to be on the forefront of this development). Take it as Flattr’s utopian moment, I like the way they are embracing the advent of a new read/write culture.

This blog is written without financial interests in mind and published under a very free Creative Commons license. If my articles are useful to you and you want to give back, come flatt(e)r me.

Flattr is still running in beta and you need an invite to join. I still have some, so if you would like one, write me an email to [myfirstname] at [thisdomain] or contact me on Twitter.

Evgeny Morozov, the man who coined the term “Twitter revolution” and, despite that, has often been called a “cyper-pessimist” was one of the first speakers of the event. And while I often find Evgeny’s argumentation to be too polemic, sometimes even Andrew Keen’esque in it’s pessimism, the man has some very valid points.

In the times of the GDR, the Stasi supported a huge network of “inofficial contributors” who were coerced – through threats or monetary rewards – into spying on their peers. Nowadays, this is no longer necessary, says Morozov. Authoritarian regimes can instead discover activists’ networks by looking them up on Facebook. In my eyes, the grandchild of the Stasi is China’s “50 cent party”: An enormous horde of people paid for spreading propaganda on the ‘Net.

There has been a change in the role of access to information. Publishing information has become so cheap that it is the new default, even in environments where this would previously have been a “no-go”. And the regimes react – not by suppressing information, but by discrediting the sender. What does this mean for the importance of freedom of information?

Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks seems to base his work on the conviction that transparency leads to a better world. It’s some kind of a journalistic determinism. Global Voices’ David Sasaki questions the role of investigative reporting: “Is it really true that traditional journalism minimizes corruption?”

For Jeff Jarvis, that’s not even a question. “We now must defend the public,” he says, “because what is public is owned by the public, and that’s us.” And “if you cut down from the public, you steal from all of us. [...] If you don’t share your knowledge, you’re being anti-social.”

The evening before, Christian Heller fought privacy at taz’ MediaTuesday event. Data security, he says, can be used against us. It “doesn’t necessary protect the weak from the powerful”. David Sasaki says that more and more raw data is put out on the ‘Net and it’s up to us to put it in context. Christian Heller wants to free information from its context. He calls this a plea in support of postmodernism.

Sokari Ekine, who talked about mobile activism in Africa, in an interview that we did said that revolutions are made by people, not by technology. Sami ben Gharbia wonders why media attention often focuses more on the technological development than on the issue, taking much-hyped crisis mapping tool Ushahidi as an example.

Iranian women right activist Farnaz Seifi tells me in an interview that the Iranian people “don’t need any other help rather than [free access to information]“. Evgeny Morozov explains to netzpolitik.org that the power of information is a myth stemming from America’s efforts during the cold war. Americans, he says, still believe that the US won that conflict – because of Radio Free Europe.

But he’s united again with Seifi when it comes to Western donors supporting projects in foreign countries. Their money disengages genuine activists, he claims. “I personally do not agree with lots of the projects inside the country with foreign countries’ budget”, says Seifi. “This is our internal fight. We have to do it ourselves.”

Kyrgyzstan: Revolution, social media, activism through contemporary art

The event was attended by a small group from revolution-shaken Kyrgyzstan. Tolkun Umaraliev highlighted Central Asia-centered group blog NewEurasia and social media news site and blogging platform Kloop.kg has valuable sources during the coup d’état. Eventhough only 14% of the population have access to the Internet, Tolkun sees citizen journalism in an important position.

He also told the story of Timur Toktonaliev, a 16 years old blogger who is the youngest journalist ever accredited to the Kyrgyz parliament. Working after school, he reports from the ongoings at the parliament. Readers of his blog can also pose questions to their deputees, which Timur will then try to get answered in interviews with the politicians.

Nellya Dzhamanbaeva of ArtEast told me about how they use contemporary art to raise awareness for social issues. While censors – mostly older people – did not understand contemporary art, the young audience they aim at would get the message, she told me.

As for the current situation in Kyrgyzstan, both Tolkun and Nellya seemed unsure what to expect. Visibly shocked by the second bloody revolution within five years, Nellya told that she doesn’t see a coup d’état as the right way for the country. Tolkun, while praising interim president Rosa Otunbajewa as a “very intelligent person”, said he wasn’t sure what to expect for the future, as the promises of the new leadership could turn out to be populism again, as were those of the revolutionaries of 2005′s “tulip revolution”.

Citizen-proposed legislation in Thailand

Niw Wong spoke about her work at iLaw.or.th, a Thai website that aims to promote citizen-proposed legislation. Since 2007, Thailand’s constitutions requires only 10.000 signatures to bring citizen-proposed legislation into parliament (first introduced through the constitution of 1997, 50.000 signatures were required before). iLaw.or.th collects ideas by citizens and helps them in drafting valid proposals.

Citizen-proposed legislation is, in my eyes, a great concept. Yet no draft has made it into the parliament since the opportunity was introduced more than ten years ago. Niw points out the complex process required for supporting a proposal as a key problem, which includes providing an ID card at a local . A more simple process, probably similar to Germany’s ePetition system, could make it easier for people to support drafts, thus making citizen-proposed legislation an effective tool for participatory politics.

Preparing for violent elections in Uganda

Next year, Uganda, a country that has not seen a single peaceful change of government in 48 years, will have only the second multi-party elections in its history. Gerald Karuhanga of the Justice and Development Council fears that the country will experience the same post-election violence that in 2009 left thousands of Kenyans dead.

An initiative called “PRESERVE” aims to reduce and document violent events before, during and after the elections through regional workshops, information dissemination, debates, public dialogues and “research based advocacy”, mostly trying to reach out to youth leagues, but also police and women’s organisations.

As tools for information dissemination, Gerald named mostly broadcasting tools such as TV, radio and newspapers. Asked about the use of mobile phones, he presented two ways of using mobile phones for information dissemination, namely through sending out SMS and voice mails. The latter is especially interesting because through voice messages, the huge illiterate part of the population (32%) could possibly be reached as well.

Still I think that mobile phones could also be used as a back channel, i.e. for information gathering. E.g. Ushahidi was developed as a crisis mapping tool during Kenya’s after-election riots, and in Ghana activists have used mobile phones to monitor elections and document possible evidence of vote rigging, one of the stated goals of PRESERVE.

Hip hop spreads political messages in Africa

Parker Mah held an enlightening talk about political hip hop in Africa. “Hip hop is booming in Africa”, he said, asking “why hip hop and why Africa?”. I can only recommend you to check out his presentation on Prezi. The slides are mostly self-descriptive and contain most of the content of Parker’s talk, including some great examples of African conscious rap.

As a personal educated guess, I have made up my own answer to Parker’s question. In the West, for several hundred years we have been used to see political criticism presented in written form (i.e. newspapers). Africa, on the other hand, has a longstanding history of oral information dissemination (e.g. Mali’s griot tradition). So hip hop, in my eyes, can be seen as continuing this tradition.

Hungarian elections

Visiting Hungary on election day (April 11), I got a devastating image of a democracy where young people see no (liberal) politicians they can trust in as an antisemitic, antiziganic, neofascist party – Jobbik – gets nearly as much votes as the currently governing social democrats. My German readers may be interested in my article for Spreeblick where I describe my impressions.

It’s definitely documentary, but I’ve been thinking and talking about it more and [documentary] doesn’t mean much anymore. Now creation is made in a way that putting names on such creation doesn’t really mean anything. Lots of people from our generation, we are inspired and influenced by so many different fields because we have access to so [much] more than before. It’s impossible to just be inspired by cinema – you listen to music all the time and you read stuff and you have access to all those amazing things and so I guess now we are seeing more hybrid creations and they don’t belong to any genre. So I don’t see myself as owed to cinematography – I don’t even call myself a director or anything. I call myself a “filmer” – I don’t know if that would be a word in English – but in a way I’m not really a filmmaker I’m just a “filmer.” I’m just a guy using a tool and that tool is a camera but it could be something else.

Similarly, I’ve chosen to call myself a “writer” or “author”, not a journalist. While I phrase my motivation differently, it is based on the same observations as Moon’s: A blurring of lines between different media and genres.

Being a journalist, as I understand it, does not mean being employed by a newspaper or writing reportages. It means having been socialized with what I call the “narrative of journalism”. To know its history, its heroes, its principles.

In that sense, I am a blogger. Not only do I write mainly for blogs, the blogosphere is also where I started writing and where today I get most of my news from.

But being a blogger and being a journalist cannot be compared. Journalism is a profession. Blogging is use of a medium, like “writing for a newspaper”. I write for blogs. I write for other media, too.

The only consistency is text. That’s why I’m a writer.

Today was packed with talks on both main stream media and the blogosphere in Russia. While the country’s blogosphere is extremely huge – a count by yandex registers 12 million blogs – the internet is still of minor importance relative to Germany. This is also caused by the fact that only about 40% of the people have access to the net.

TV is still king in the information business. As Evgenij Mezdrikov quoted from a movie title, “if it was not on TV, it didn’t happen”. At the same time, online media outlets seem to lag behind in the adoption of new technology compared to Germany. According to Mezdrikov, allowing user comments and using multi media is still relatively new.

In fact, Russian journalism seems to be in a bad shape. Viktor Juketschev even announced to talk only about “the living parts” of the media landscape, i.e. the privately owned outlets. According to Mezdrikov, “media don’t produce facts”, but only distribute them. Investigate journalism is therefore hard to find.

One reason Mezdrikov gave is that the authorities in general act repellent towards journalistic requests, even though Russia’s freedom of information act is the only worldwide favoring media professionals over ordinary citizens. Officials are obligated to answer their requests within 7 days, while queue time for citizens is 30 days.

That was especially interesting for me because I recently attended a workshop on “Legal Leaks”, where we discussed the issue of privileges for journalists. There’s a very informative toolkit on using freedom of information requests in journalistic work.

Even though he highlighted their advantage of being eye witnesses, Mezdrikov agreed with me that citizen journalists cannot make up for professional investigative journalism. Viktor Juketschev later presented “Tak-tak-tak“, a “social network for civil rights” which aims to provide activists with a platform where to organize collaborative investigation and publication of issues of public interest. I am rather doubtful of its possible success, as activists lack both time and funding for bigger projects.

Elia Kabanov presented several cases of persecution of bloggers and journalists for their writing both on- and offline. Even though Russia has a bad reputation for press freedom due to a series of high profile murders of journalists, repression against bloggers is not as widespread as in other countries.

In some of the cases Kabanov spoke about, police intervention seems fungible, e.g. a fake amok threat. In general, sentences seemed quite harsh, even though prison sentences are rare. After all, local police seem to act independently, which means that there’s no national agenda for repression.

One reason for some of the arrests could be that “people think they can write everything”, as Kabanov said. In some people’s eyes, that includes threats, libel and publication of private data. Kabanov later talked very negatively about Russian blog comments, which he perceives as predominantly useless or even hateful, which could explain his argument.

On the other hand, there seem to be no examples of huge political campaigns driven by Russia’s blogosphere. I presented about Germany’s movement against internet filtering, which is sans analog in Russia. Blogs still need to bring issues to the attention of main stream media – especially TV – to make an impact, of which there are increasingly successful examples.

Or, as Elia Kabanov said, “100 years ago their was a saying, ‘the stone is the weapon of the proletariat’. Today, a blog is the best weapon of a free man.”

From the beginning there has been considerable resistance against the feature. That’s quite the usual, seems as if even social media early adopters have a huge bunch of conservative techno-critics among them. One of the main points of criticism was that the new tool does not allow to add a comment to the retweeted text. Well, duh: You don’t need to use it every time you retweet something.

But in some cases it would be nice if people would start to adopt it. Today, there was an occasion which made this extremely clear. It was the day of the first hearing of the class-action law suit against the data retention bill before Germany’s federal constitutional court. There are about 35.000 complainants – more than ever before – so interest in the case is high. Still, only three people were twittering out of the court (as you needed to have a press card to take a laptop with you), using the hash tags #vds (“VorratsDatenSpeicherung”, en.: data retention) and #BVerfG (BundesVerfassungsGericht, en.: federal constitutional court).

Following these hash tags on Twitter, users would want to get the coverage from people inside the court room, plus commentary from others following the event (at least that’s what I assume). Well, here’s what they got:

@akvorrat is the account of the working group against data retention, twittering from the court room. The other messages are retweets of either @akvorrat’s coverage or commentary on it. The news stream for the hash tag is polluted with redundant messages. Because people are using the old retweet method. Twitter’s new feature cleans the stream of redundant information. In my opinion, that’s a huge plus in usability.

Earlier this week I attended a panel discussion on related rights. There has been a discussion going on in Germany for some times, started by newspaper publishers that are lobbying for the introduction of related rights for newspaper publishers. My boss Markus Beckedahl (I’m currently doing an internship at newthinking communications, in case you’re wondering), who was on the panel, has written it up here (in German).

The Axel Springer AG has been one of the publishing companies pressing for said related rights, so its concern director for public affairs, Christoph Keese, represented it on the panel. Keese did make a fool of himself because he could not exactly explain what he was lobbying about, but he did say something reasonable:

“There wont be a working market for journalistic products without a one-click solution.”

Today, I was in the perfect situation to experience what he meant. One of my favorite journalists, Heribert Prantl, has interviewed Germany’s new interior minister, Thomas de Maizière. The newspaper’s online version published snippets of the interview that sounded quite interesting, so I wanted to get hold of the real thing.

“Read the whole interview in Saturday’s edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung”, it said below the summary. I tried to find a way to purchase the article online, but did not find any reasonable option (you can get an epaper, but the minimum is a month’s subscription). Which left me with two options: Find a kiosk and buy the paper (it was 9 pm by then), or pirate it.

Now, usually I would not have come to the point where I have to make such a decision. Not only because most content is available online for free, but also because there are not many articles that are “must haves”. But this one was done by Prantl, so I would have paid for it. That I still tried to get hold of the interview when I realized they would not let me pay for it (at least online), and finally left the house and spent 40 minutes to get it from a kiosk, was only due to the fact that I wanted to write about it for gulli:news (I did here (in German)).

I think at this point it is clear why the way the Süddeutsche Zeitung is doing it can’t be but wrong. It’s the ultimate turn-off for any casual reader. But how could it be done better? As Keese says, a one-click solution that makes it easy for me as a reader to access paid content is a must have.

What would this one-click solution look like? There are several things we can already say about it. First of all, there needs to be an easy way to do micropayments (I would not pay more than a few cents for newspaper articles on a regular basis – I consume at least 100 blog entries per day. If I paid just 10 cents for each, that would exceed my rent).

Then, paid content needs to be integrated into the link economy, i.e. it needs to be searchable and linkable (Süddeutsche Zeitung’s epaper is delivered as a PDF, which means subscribers can’t point others to individual articles).

Behind the pay wall, access needs to be unlimited. Any kind of DRM – like restricting requests of the article to a certain number of times – is a no-go: If I pay for content, I do not want to be constrained in its use. Just as I may do what I want with the newspaper I got at a kiosk, I don’t want anybody to interfere with my use of paid online content.

Now there’s a reason I don’t use iTunes, either: I don’t want to download a software to be able to pay for music. I don’t say there shall not be such a thing. But just as you may or may not use a shopping cart at the super market, I don’t want to be forced to download Apple’s software.

Now that I’ve written up this list, I can’t but wonder why publishing companies like Springer are lobbying for related right instead of just letting me pay for their content. Until then, I will either get it for free – or ignore it behind pay walls that for absurd reasons were built without doors.