The journalists

Went to Winterthur (#JourTag13) this evening to hear Daniel Binswanger (DAS MAGAZIN) giving a speech about the situation of journalism. Daniel was one of the keynote speakers at the yearly conference of the Association of Quality in Journalism. He compared the latest developments in journalism to bubbles in financial markets. Like in financial markets you find herding effects in journalism. You get in the dangerous situation of feedback loops of number of clicks, response by readers, and subjects of articles. A classic media hype (about nothing) is born. Daniel was referring to research by Didier Sornette, professor for entrepreneurial risks at ETH Zurich, who shows in his research that at the beginning of every burst bubble there is a feedback loop: an asset gets popular, it gets the media attention, more and more people buy it, it gets more popular, more expensive, and so on. Take care of too much feedback, would be the take-away.

I don’t know exactly why but sitting in Winterthur and looking at the crowd of journalists (mixed with media researches) made me think about Elia Canetti’s book Die Blendung. There is one passage where Dr. Kien, the book’s tragic hero, gets robbed and beaten in the street. He almost bleeds out without realising that it’s him who was beaten. You are sitting there and somebody beats you and you don’t realise it until your half dead. I haven’t decided yet if that’s what I think about journalism or rather journalists.

©S. Fischer Verlag