ShareThisWASHINGTON - A renowned blogger and a media magnate's differing views on the future of journalism dominated the first day of the Federal Trade Commission's workshop on the subject.
Arianna Huffington and Rupert Murdoch's appearances Tuesday drew people to the conference and drew a variety of reactions from the crowd.
The pair spoke for about 20 minutes each to an audience of researchers, journalists and others in communication fields as part of the workshop "How will journalism survive the Internet age?" The workshop explored the problems besieging traditional media and tactics for adapting to the Internet.
"The best speakers were the two big names of the day: Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington," said Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va., a group that tries to counter what it sees as liberal media bias.
He said both made excellent points - Murdoch and his warning of political influence in the media and Huffington's caution that journalism can't change the way the Internet operates.
Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, decried papers that still distribute content online for free. News, he said, has a value, and readers should pay for it.
"Some rewrite, at times without attribution, and use stories of expensive, distinguished journalists - who invested days, weeks, even months on their stories - all under the tattered veil of fair use," Murdoch said. Journalism's future is "limited only by editors and producers unwilling to fight for their viewers or government using its heavy hand either to over-regulate or to subsidize us."
Murdoch's speech drew Craig Aaron, a senior program director at Washington-based freepress.net, to the workshop. He said he wanted to hear from the business side of journalism. Freepress promotes a diverse and independent media.
He disagreed with Murdoch's assertion that government-funded media, such as PBS, is a bad thing.
"Here in the U.S. we spend far less supporting public media than in say England or Canada or, say, Scandinavia," Aaron said.
Gainor, however, agreed with Murdoch. He said he's heard talk of a "newspaper" bailout by the government, and Murdoch's point resonated with him.
Huffington, publisher of The Huffington Post, countered Murdoch's view on aggregation. Her site pays some writers and editors but relies mostly on volunteer bloggers and links to work elsewhere. She said reporters should expect their work to link to, and be linked by, other sites.
"Aggregation, within the fair-use exceptions of copyright law, is part of the Web's DNA - period," Huffington said. Of sites taking her content and linking it, she said, "We love the traffic, we love the eyeballs that we can monetize with advertising."
Her jabs at Murdoch's views earned laughter from the crowd.
"The charge-for-content crowd seems to change strategies as often as Lindsay Lohan switches meds," Huffington said, noting that six methods have already been trademarked.
Audience members said both speakers made good points.
"Forget their political differences - I think both of them had some really important things to say," Gainor said.
Sally Duros said she traveled from Chicago to hear views about the future of news. She works with the online investigative group Better Government Association. She said she hadn't learned anything new by lunchtime, but Huffington's comments about Murdoch were "amusing ... interesting and entertaining. They're sparring partners."
Brad Weltman, vice president of Government Affairs for the Magazine Publishers of America, agreed with Gainor and Aaron.
Weltman said that he came because magazines are suffering many of the problems of newspapers, and, like Gainor, Duros and Aaron, he didn't know how the conflict between citizen and professional journalists would turn out.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
