Crisis-stricken Newspapers Hope for Citizen Journalism

Media companies could be tempted to treat blog sources too carelessly due to pressure to save money. Spiegel fears this in its online edition. With bloggers and so-called citizen journalism, in which readers encourage or write media contributions, many media companies want to strengthen their roots in the region. However, Der Spiegel criticizes that there are also other motives behind the run on reader participation: "From the point of view of many media companies, the greatest thing about Web 2.0 is that it seems to encourage people to work for free," writes the news magazine. Not least the crisis-ridden daily press is discovering this temptation as an opportunity. According to Spiegel, the WAZ newspaper group has the most far-reaching plans in this respect in Germany. It wants to replace local offices with regional collective editions, which will be supplemented by reader blogs on the regional pages on the Internet. However, according to Spiegel, an initial attempt to close a local editorial office was met with numerous subscription cancellations.