John Naughton's 'Writers who work for nothing: it's a licence to print money'

Naughton discusses the advancement of new media technologies and its effect on journalism, using topical examples such as the photo taken with a mobile and sent to BBC News Online straight after the February Cumbrian train accident, and the footage used to broadcast the July 7 bombings in London.

I was astounded at the metaphor used to describe the amount of digital information generated last year ("enough to fill a dozen stacks of hardback books stretching from the earth to the sun"). Interestingly, "by 2010 more than 70% of all digital content in the world will have been created by consumers". This prediction clearly marks out where the seat of power lies: with us, the consumers. Naughton gives two points of view: the optimists have a good argument with the fact that NMTs have created a "great release of human creativity" and mediums like the internet have provided the appropriate means.

However, we have to consider the counter-argument: as these phenomenons have effectively handed the power over to us, we must be cautious of exploitation. Nick Carr is spot on: "One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0... is the distribution of production into the hands of the many, and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few." As happens so much in an essentially capitalist society, the providers or workers are dominated by an institution (often governed by one or two people) and are rewarded a fraction of what their work is worth. Although each individual contribution is superfluous, the aggregation of "those contributions on a massive scale - on a web scale", equates to a lucrative business.

Naughton's comment on the MySpace deal is highly appropriate: Murdoch's enterprise epitomises the capitalist system, and his latest purchase is certainly a "shrewd" one. After all, can we seriously discuss the 'democratisation of the media' as a positive outcome if one single man can be in control of so much global media output???