Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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(Fuller, 2010). Often practical constraints and routines within newsrooms make the 
integration of user created content in legacy news publishers’ websites difficult. Research 
shows that on many news websites, links are provided to invite users to participate, but actual 
user participation options are often limited (Rebillard & Touboul, 2010). Users are allowed to 
fill in a survey, add a comment or give feedback to editors. But the addition of non-
professional contributions into the online news stream of legacy newspaper websites is (still) 
less common practice.
However increasingly, traditional newspapers incorporate participatory options in their own 
websites and the interest in user participation grows (Rebillard & Touboul, 2010). In 
Germany, for instance, the regional newspaper Opinio is fully composed of weblogs 
(Tomesen, 2005).
Many authors have discussed the potential of more participatory forms of journalism, which 
use citizen’s contributions, but still see important roles for professional journalists to play. 
Charlie Beckett (2010) for instance investigates the options of networked journalism and 
claims that a continuous interaction between citizen contributors and professional journalists 
has in cases such as the British 2010 elections led to ground breaking and influential new 
forms of journalism. Professional journalists took on different, but still indispensable roles in 
moderating content, encouraging people to contribute, linking citizen contributions to 
background information, and checking facts.
Another perspective comes from Jay Rosen (2011), who introduces the concept of the pro-am 
(professional amateur), which refers to practices in which news publishers invite dedicated 
users to contribute on a regular basis. An example of this is the Public Insight Network, an 
organisation which manages a database of over 100.000 people who have agreed to being 
used as a source for journalists. The database contains information on their interests, networks 
and location, thereby enabling the professional journalists of associated news media to ask the 
right questions for support to the right people (
http://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/
). 
Moderation, obligatory registration codes of conduct and different other mechanisms of self-
regulation are employed to stimulate and support a certain quality level on user generated 
news sites (Hellberger, Leurdijk, & Munck, 2010). So while the discussion on the quality and 
reliability of citizen journalism and blogs will continue, there is also evidence that more and 
more sophisticated ways of moderating content and improving the quality of user generated 
content are being developed.