Last week and over some of the weekend, the National Union of Journalists met for their annual delgates meeting.
Now the NUJ is often criticised for its lack of engagement with new media and the blogging community, and sometimes this is the case. But things are changing quite rapidly.
I tweet. I am an NUJ member and on the National Exec. I am also a web journalist.
Can we not win? We get criticised for not using twitter and blogs and then when we use both for what was exciting, edgy and excellent coverage of out annual conference, we get slammed by 200 Words from Gerard Cunningham for doing it.
He slammed outgoing union president James Doherty, who was having a dig at David Cameron, who described people using Twitter as ‘twatters’. Doherty was not slamming Twitteres. I am not sure if he is one, but incoming vice-president Donnacha Delong is a new media evangelist and twitters - http://twitter.com/donnachadelong
Cunningham quotes feedback on tweets of Doherty's speech as having references "to the NUJ’s ‘head in the sand approach’."
While this may have been true in the past is is far from it now, especially given Delong's ascendance.
Cunnigham was refering to student members coverage of the event at nujadm.org.uk. They were tweeting, blogging, podcasting and filming, as well as posting more than 100 images of the event on the website. They were an absolute model of modern journalism.
If Cunningham and whoever made these comments had read more than the tweets, rather than just slagging it off based on 140 characters they would have found that the union is engaging in an intelligent discussion about convergence and its effects on all aspects of the media and journalism.
I would simply as Cunnigham and others who care to knock the only body that actually defends their rights to read some more of the coverage of the meeting here http://www.nujadm.org.uk/ or ask the students whether they thought we had our heads in the sand.
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Interesting, I was trying to find the full text of James's speech when I responded to Gerard this morning. I though GC's criticism that some of the student journalists had only set up Twitter accounts prior to conference was pretty rich too.
ReplyDeleteNow watch us get criticised for daring to disagree with potental members. As you say - it's hard to see where the NUJ can win with some people.
For the record, I was a delegate. I sat in the hall and listened to the debates. -Gerard Cunningham
ReplyDeleteI made the point on Gerard's blog, but it may have been missed, that some of the student delegates set up new Twitter accounts for their ADM work, but had and continue to have existing accounts, eg. @carolinebeavon (@carolineNUJ).
ReplyDelete