Reclaim The Public

Originally uploaded by Sameli

I have spent approximately 1-2 days lately working at the National Library. This place is amazing. It is incredibly quiet, as central as things can get, equipped with an astonishing collection of material and a café downstairs. The great thing is that you cannot take your bag in so you have to think what you need.

As I am writing this, I sit at an old wooden table with a beautiful view to the Senate Square. I ended up here by accident a couple of weeks ago. I had 1,5 hours between meetings and had forgotten my wallet home. There was no point walking to the office or taking the metro home. So I decided to give this place a try.

In the last weeks I have learned to use microfilms to look at newspapers from the 1970s or read articles on cultural policy from the 60s. The most surprising things is that this beautiful place is very very empty. As I for a long time, most people never think about it as a public place. They somehow think it belongs to the university or should only be used by researchers.

Let´s reclaim places like these. Let´s start at the library and work our way to the City Hall. We have somehow forgotten what public means. We too often end up looking at these places through the eyes of the primary user.

I mean what café in Helsinki has all Finnish newspapers from the 19th century onwards, all books published in Finland, every doctoral thesis from the University of Helsinki, all cultural magazines in handy collections and such silence. I wonder if the library people themselves even now what kind of a gem they possess. This place is perhaps the best evidence to how we get more by sharing.

Come over.

Journalism is a service job

THE INTERVIEW
Originally uploaded by Akbar Simonse

In today´s Helsingin Sanomat a veteran public radio journalist Olli Ihamäki from YLE gives a wonderful but all too rare description of what a good journalist actually should do. He criticizes the current trend in radio where the audience is left to listen to a discussion between the host and a guest and where the role of the journalist is to fill the gaps between music.

Ihamäki reminds that the journalist should always be on the side of the listener. Quote from the article:
"Ihamäki´s ideal would be that the reporter would not come to the studio at all but would spend the day at swimming halls, in trams and in office buildings interviewing people."

How different would our newspapers and radio stations be if more journalists would follow this logic? It would bring a different kind of randomness to the broadcast but also challenge the journalists to use their medium to the full. As Ihamäki points out, the trend seems to be that journalists are more often leaving the description of things to experts rather than relying on their own professional skills.

Having mobile journalists or journalists assigned to different parts of town would be a great move towards citizen journalism whilst still maintaining journalistic standards. It would challenge journalists to open up the logic and processes of their work to the audience much more. Journalists would become trusted members of their respective communities, which most likely would bring across very different stories than we hear now. This is what the best regional papers still rely on - building stories out of the activities of people. Spending time with people usually has that influence that you become interested in people.