The Mutualisation of News

"Gone are the days of 'us and them' journalism. The web has led to a news community where ideas and news are shared rather than delivered." The public are just as important as journalists in making the news.

"We controlled the delivery of news and comment to our readers and the only involvement they had was through the carefully controlled letters page." News was controlled before. The public weren't getting the full news story, but only what it was decided that we should be told.

"The development of the internet, and with it the creation of 'citizen journalists', has revolutionised the delivery of information." Citizen journalists, members of the public who create their own news, have changed the way in which we now receive our news.

"We can use the community of our readers in ways we would not have been able to in the past." Readers are more important now than they have ever been before.

"It cannot be true that there are only a handful of people worth listening to in the world. Comment is Free is infinitely richer and more diverse and more plural." Everyone is given a voice, rather than just journalists, as everyone's news is just as important.

"Where members feel involved and where there is a shared interest." Involving readers more. Rather than just reading the news, we are active participants in making it.

"New applications such as Twitter make it increasingly possible for individual journalists to publish outside the constraints of our newspaper and website and develop direct relationships with communities of readers." No restrictions with citizen journalism. Citizen journalists can publish anything they want.

"A blurring of the line between journalism and readers." Readers can now be journalists too.

"Our newspapers have a tight control on information as no story is published until it has gone through several quality checks. But in the world of Twitter, for example, journalists are now publishing information without any monitoring." News is not controlled like it used to be.

"If at some point the technology becomes too large in scale, that is the time to build guidelines. For example, we now have guidelines for Twitter." Danger of new and digital media giving people too much power.