Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 19 June 2009

People working for independent media face problems that traditional mainstream media may be better at resolving. But if the traditional media landscape collapses, where does it leave the ‘indies’?

The story of the two journalists/videographers Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are currently serving prison sentences in North Korea, emphasise the problems of independent and freelance journalists who work for media such as the Copenhagen Voice and not the well-known mainstream video media such as CNN or BBC, according to a report in the New York Times.

Ling and Lee worked not for a news network or a widely read newspaper, but for one of the growing number of independent media (the ‘indies’), Current TV, a channel best known, if it is known at all, for a mix of short YouTube-style segments about technology, current events and culture.

The two journalists, both American, were reportedly working on a piece about North Korean refugees when they were stopped by border guards and subsequently sentenced to 12 years in a labour prison.

The New York Times report stated that start-up news organizations like Current TV “are increasingly sending journalists to the world’s hot spots, putting a spotlight on news stories in new ways.”

Doing this, “experts say, (is) another consequence of the fragmented media landscape and the declines in international news coverage by traditional outlets,” the New York Times report added. “The unconventional assignments are an expression of the generational changes in news coverage, especially in TV, where the jobs of camera operators, sound technicians and producers have, in many cases, been subsumed into one do-it-all position. And being unencumbered by a traditional news outlet has its advantages, as the reporters are sometimes free to take more risks.”

That may well be good for getting stories onto the front pages of printed media, or onto the Mogulus screen of the Copenhagen Voice. But it also shows how the job of reporting the news is changing as the media landscape changes - with the strong possibility that traditional media will be gone within ten years, replaced by small news operators, ‘indies’, without the backing to help the journalists in the field who get into trouble.

The news will be there to be reported, and journalists/videographers will be there to do the reporting. But without the support of readers and viewers, the indies will be unable to help their staff when they are in trouble - whether inadvertently crossing a border between North and South Korea or deliberately staying on in Teheran after the visa has expired.

Click here to read the New York Times story, ‘A World of Risk for a New Brand of Journalist’.