The ability for citizen journalism to effectively pay for itself and become a business remains in a state of flux, a conference in London heard this week.

The We Media Global conference heard from a panel of experts and business people on the issue of "Where's the Money?" moderated by Newsnight's economic editor, Stephanie Flanders.

Chris Ahearn of Reuters Media said: "The model for individual bloggers hasn't been worked out. The economic friction for paying someone for a small piece of content doesn't work right now," but he added that "it will be at some point".

Mr Ahearn also said that, despite this apparent lack of a business model, "110% of the time bloggers have better tools than journalists".

Rafat Ali, editor of digital media blog, paidContent.org said: "Helping blogs grow will be the lower risk model - and better than trying to change the mindset of existing journalists. The weakest links are existing journalists who are not open to new techniques."

He said blogging was like expecting traditional journalists to do completely different things than they have done for years.

Indeed, the precepts of blogging - where no sub editors are required - could mean that media companies could work on "one tenth of the costs they are used to", said Mr Ali, to gasps from the largely media-based crowd. "It's about doing a lot at less cost - at 'start-up' costs not the normal costs of media companies."

Sebastian Grigg of financiers Goldman Sachs said the media is facing a period of huge uncertainty about the impact of digital media, especially blogs on its business: "We have no idea where we're headed. All we really know now is that there's a large economic boon for consumers. It's a great time to be a consumer of media. The question is whether the kind of infrastructure in traditional media can be supported on anything like the so-called new business models."

Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati said: "You learn the lessons of those who don't take up distruptive tools. The core trends are unstoppable. Broadband and mobile adoption is continuing to increase along with the availablty of tools that make people producers as well as consumers.

"The post-industrial schema of someone tied to their chair who consumes stuff is over. The new model is where people become participants.

"Ten years from now we'll say things like 'Remember when we called ouselves consumers!'."

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