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Greenslade leaves NUJ because of new media debate

Posted: 25/10/07 By: Laura Oliver

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Guardian media blogger and former Daily Mirror editor Roy Greenslade is quitting the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), because of the organisation's attitude towards new media.

Greenslade, who has been a member of the union for 42 years, announced his resignation on his blog and said it would be 'hypocritical' to remain a NUJ member 'when I am now so opposed to the union's central aims'.

In his post Greenslade said the group's policies needed to be updated to accommodate the growth of online journalism: "Journalistic skills are not entirely wiped out in an online world, but…they cannot be confined any longer to an exclusive élite group."

Explaining his decision Greenslade suggested that while the NUJ sees the internet as a threat to journalism 'it [the web] is much more a threat to the union itself.'

"[T]he union, as with the print unions of old, cannot possibly adapt to meet the revolutionary demands of a new technology," his blog post said.

Greenslade added that the union needed to change its structure, as titles such as reporter-photographer and reporter-sub were now 'utterly irrelevant': "All of us must be multi-media journos from now on."

His resignation follows an article in the latest edition of the NUJ's Journalist magazine about the threat of new media to traditional formats, which has sparked debate across the industry.

Entitled 'Web 2.0 is Rubbish', the piece written by Donnacha Delong, new media representative for the NUJ, raised concerns that traditional journalistic content and skills is under threat from user-generated content and the internet.

"[T]hose who argue that Web 2.0 is the future want to throw out the baby with the bathwater…the idea that, instead of posting comments below a journalistic article, we get rid of the article altogether and just have the comments is truly dangerous,” Delong wrote.

Delong's article - a precursor to a report on the impact of new media on journalists to be released by the NUJ's commission on multi-media working next month – has been heavily criticised by media commentators.

In a comment reacting to Greenslade's post, Tim Gopsill, editor of Journalist, said Delong's article was based on the experiences of journalists nationwide and that the union was trying to 'preserve professional standards in a somewhat challenging environment'.

"Where on earth did Roy Greenslade get the idea that the NUJ has some kind of policy that is resistant to digital media? It's simply nonsense," he wrote.

Greenslade added that he wanted to continue supporting the NUJ's Journalism Matters campaign, while urging 'every media outlet…to embrace the online world.'

He also said he agreed with the union's stand against using digitisation at newspapers as an excuse for staff cutbacks.

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