Neuberger-Nuernbergk.doc - 1 - COMPETITION, COMPLEMENTARITY OR INTEGRATION? The relationship between professional and participatory media © Christoph Neuberger and Christian Nuernbergk This article discusses how the relationship between professional and participatory media could be described in a changing media environment. It presents key findings of a two-year research project which explored online journalism in Germany. The findings draw a multilayered picture of the latest developments concerning professional online newsrooms and their counterparts in participatory media. The data consists primarily of standardised interviews with editors-in-chief of online newsrooms. In most instances, they daily produce a supra-regional and comprehensive news offer on their websites. 183 newsrooms participated in the survey, which took place in 2007 (response rate: 44%). At a first glance, three different relations can be identified between professional and citizen media: competition, complementarity and integration. We found little evidence that weblogs or other forms of participatory media are turning out to replace traditional forms of journalism. It seems to be more likely that they complement one another. Besides this, we observed that the integration of audience participation platforms into news websites is expanding. Therefore, the study also reflects on the following questions: How do newsrooms manage user contributions on their sites? What kinds of rules and features have already been implemented? KEYWORDS blogs; German news websites; online journalism; participatory journalism; user-generated content Introduction What kind of change are journalism and current public spheres subject to due to the advent of new media? The research project “Journalism on the Internet” (2006-2008) aimed to investigate the effects of this broader shift. Therefore, especially the emerging relationship between professional and participatory media was interrogated on an empirical basis. In addition, it was also assumed that there might be an increasing amount of technical intermediation due to specialised “search-engine journalism” (Hartley, 2008). But will common social web applications like weblogs and collaborative edited platforms really lead into a transformation of news journalism? And afterwards, are they going to replace traditional media? In the face of this simplified communicative access to the public sphere, there still seems to be need of middlemen, which mediate between communicators and the “people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen, 2006). Yet, journalists’ tasks and roles may currently start to exceed traditional routines. Besides the traditional mass media model consisting of professional communicators, two additional types of communication are apparent on the Internet. On the one hand, practical capacities in general, and thus communications, tend to be more participatory, interactive, and networked. Yochai Benkler is speaking of “enhanced