這幾天太忙, 沒有看網誌, 今天看到東南西北就前兩天牛棚討論會的一些總結與後續討論:
I was at the InMediaHK First Anniversary Forum
at the Cattle Depot Artists Village. There were three speakers from
InMediaHK, who explained their organizational history and philosophy. If I
were them, I would be less concerned about defining the raison d'être.
Here is my chain of logic:
- We live in a time when the mainstream media
cannot allow everyone the time and space to have their say. The
mainstream media are not necessarily to be blamed. This is how they
are structured and this is all they can do. - We live in a time when the Internet offered
common citizens a way to have their say. - The enormously popular Chinese television
show Super Girl (超级女声)
has the slogan: "If you want to sing, you just sing" (想唱就唱). - InMediaHK (and there are no doubt others
like them) will be about: "If you want to speak out, you just speak
out."
It is that simple, and there need not to be too
much soul-searching and existential angst. After one year,
InMediaHK is already immensely successful and the most informative alternative
media site within my bookmarks. InMediaHK is not expected to displace all
of the mainstream newspapers completely (and many of them are multimillion
dollar operations that employ hundreds of reporters), but it can supplement our
understanding with alternative views about what happened out there.
同意 in-media 是處於一個科技解放個體言論自由的時代, 可是這個平台還是有別於 blog 和 bbs 等網上媒體的位置的. 三者均利用了網絡科技, 三者均是言論自由的實踐, 但 inmedia 既不是 blog, 亦不是 bbs, 前者以個體為中心, 個人的網絡效應, blogger 與 blogger 的 social network, 感性聯繫非常之強; BBS 更像一個社區, 裡面的討論非常非常熱鬧, 但其社區效應卻有點 exclusive. inmedia 有個體的專欄, 但更多是具有主題性的集體寫作, 大家就某些 agenda 進行討論. 而 inmedia 的 communities, 有 bloggers (個體) 亦有團體, 如環境一個版面中就有很多環保團體的積極份子, 他們的立場不一定一致, 但卻關心相同的議題, 所以有很多比較深必的討論.
所以 rasion d'etre 的討論也很重要, 因為原因是不斷地轉變, 位置亦然, 是反思和調整的過程, positioning.
At the forum, I asked a question. I
articulated the question horribly, which made it impossible to answer.
Here, I apologize for having distressed people. So I am
going to go through the exercise again. I meant to ask:
Mainstream media usually do things in a
top-down manner. The publisher decreed that the newspaper shall have 20
pages for local news, 1 page for international news, 4 pages for horse racing
tips, a 100 page supplement for real estate listings, etc. There is a
logic why such an allocation exists. But it is also a straitjacket that
restricts certain types of coverage (e.g. international news); there is also
little likelihood that a newspaper will cede significant space for
non-traditional topics (e.g. BL comics). These are the factors that drive people to
alternative media on the Internet.Along comes InMediaHK, which is spontaneously
organized in a bottom-up manner. A group of people with similar (but not
necessarily identical) interests coalesce over time to form an editorial staff
of about a dozen or so at this time. There is a great deal of
flexibility in such an organization. Unlike mainstream media, there is
no obligation to fill up 80 pages every single day of the year; there is no
pre-allocation of space (such as one and only one page for international news,
unless thousands of people die shown in color photographs); there is no space limitation (so if you want to write a 10,000
commentary on newspaper sectional readership, you can do that).The problem with spontaneous evolution is
that it moves without a true direction or goal. The end result will not
be anything like a full-service entity like a traditional newspaper. If the present members of
InMediaHK tend to be media workers, writers and social scientists, then that
will be their strength. As they are unpaid volunteers, they will write
about what they already know or do during their 'day' jobs.My question was about how an organization
such as InMediaHK can inject some direction into their activities.是的, 你的問題很好笑, 我的朋友後來問我, 東南西北是否很喜歡賽馬? 看你當天的裝套, 帶著鴨咀帽子, 若手拿馬經, 十足十賭徒. 其實我理解你的問題, 但問案不會相差太遠, 因為我們不會控制專欄的內容, 所以若有人真的開一個賽馬的專欄, 大概我們找不到理由禁止, 不過, 會在 inmedia 寫跑馬的人, 大概不會寫賽馬貼士, 而是賽馬作為一個社會現象, 又或馬場的運作, 賭徒的社會心理, 賽馬的美學等等, 因為每一個寫東西的人, 要不為了錢(如主流媒體工作者), 要不為了與自己或別人溝通, 而 inmedia 中所聚集的一堆對話者, 應該不會是為了賽馬貼士而來...
At the forum, the speakers addressed the
difference between InMediaHK and the Disney Hunter group. The Disney
Hunter group is issue-oriented, but InMediaHK is not drive by a single issue or
even a set of specific issues. Therefore, my question has to do with how
important questions that the mainstream media are structurally incapable of
addressing can be systematically dealt with by civilian reporters who are not
beholden to special interests. I have previously offered a trivial example
about horse racing in this post.
This is not a critique of InMediaHK. I
think that they are great. I am just wondering out loud about how we will
ever get a systematic sweep of all the hidden issues. We should not be
counting on random chance that someone will emerge to take care of it.
其實我們 raison d' etre 的討論, 也是希望處理你在這裡提出的問題. 但這是一個互動的過程, 譬如說我們引進南韓的民間記者概念, 但到現在為止, 民間記者不大活躍, 所以只能慢慢去試, 去開創一種新的實踐文化.
東南西北那邊有一些主流媒體的版面閱讀分析數據, 很值得參考.