[Ti faccio una premessa: mi dispiace, ma devo scrivere questo post in inglese, già, nel mio inglese pieno di errori, per poter rispondere adeguatamente a questo articolo di Nick Garnett, uno dei maestri mondiali del mojo, il quale ha parlato di morte del mobile journalism con una riflessione straordinariamente interessante che ti invito a leggere. Il mobile journalism, però, va trattato con un po’ più di rispetto prima dare la notizia delle esequie che, a mio avviso non sono lontanissime, ma non vanno certamente avvicinate con questi modi. Mobile journalism is dead? No!
Mobile journalism id dead? My answer to Nick (and, first of all, thanks for your post)
Dear Nick,
first of all my excuses for the bad english that you will see in these lines, but after I read your lines in the blog I’ve heard from my heart the need to answer you. For multiple reasons, but first off all because I am one of those guys that are developing the mobile journalism culture in Italian language and the project is about at the beginning. In my opinion you putted me in a little danger writing what you wrote and now I will explain the reason why.
The community I met in Paris.
Thursday 8th of february I was in Paris, invited to attend at La Video Mobile conference, to tell the story about the project of Italian Mojo association and my target to import this culture in Italy, in a hostile country. When I was there, at la Cité Universitaire, I looked the community and I found a different one comparing of that one that was in front of my eyes in Galway at Mojocon 2017. I saw new countries growing,
I saw african colleagues, I saw the absence of my country, I saw, just to tell you, the “non mojo world“ that tries to become mojo. Reading your words was dangerous in my prespective because I am a mojo guy in a non mojo world and before telling my alumni, my colleagues, my environement that mojo is dead, I have to spread the story that mojo is born.
Italy is not a democratic country…
In a country that has old-fashioned market of media, old and devastated market in the journalistic job, in a country that is not a democratic country because journalism is one of the worst paid categories in job market, I can’t have the luxury chance to tell that mojo is dead but I have to carry the mojo disruptive message in the best way that I can’t and then say: “Ok, this is the mojo message, but If you can look just a little more you can find that journalism has changed“.
The Bel Paese situation.
In Italy there are two communities that are doing a super job in Rome and in Milan. They are trying to spread the message that mojo is something new, peculiar, useful, immediately operative, something that could change careers or help freelance to gain more money from their work because of the easy, technically perfect, peculiar way to product their contents. Can you imagine what will be your announcement to this brand new mojo people??? Listen, Nick I totally agree wth you, but this was not the right way.
Before announcing the death please allow “new mojo countries“ to come on the field. If not, a lot of people in Italy and other nations will say “You see!! I thought it was a geek game, something not serious!“. This is not: this is a game changer of my job and a state of mind. Is your sentence that I usually spread to my colleagues.
Probably the debate is another
In my modest opinion we have to clarify many things but starting from some others point of view. I try to pose some questions to you and the community, hope someone will answer:
How can we help the media market to find out profitable business models based on mojo? I had the first answer from this post on medium by Michael Rosenblum.
How can we clarify what is mojo and what is not mojo? I think, to be clear, that every stuff you make passing, even for one passage, in to a personal computer before publication, is not mojo. And you? What do you think?
How can we avoid the confusion of putting an overload of technologies on our smartphones to clarify that this (and here I agree with you) is simply a new journalism?
Nick, thanks: I hope you’ll understand my message.
Nick I close my post saying that I am very sorry for my horrific English and I absolutely respect your job, the things you made for us and for mojo and our community and our new friendship. But I wrote you something that I hope you will find coming from heart and soul of Italian Mojo, the guy who is trying (with a crew of other pioneers) to give the mojo in Italy see the light. I don’t want that the baby becomes in a while a baby born dead.