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Oh yes, we’ve been preparing for this moment for more than a year. Who wants to come along?

During the Media Re:Public conference in Los Angeles a little over a week ago, I was asked to come up with a 2-minute “provocation” about the future of news for a panel moderated by Jonathan Zittrain. Ethan summarized what all the panelists said.

I actually thought it was a pretty tame prediction, but I spent the rest of the day dodging journalists and editors who wanted to tell me I was wrong, naive, and even careless. Meanwhile younger colleagues were eager to tell me I was absolutely right. My friend Sameer Padania even rolled his eyes at me and said, “Have you even read the report I wrote? That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.” He’s not kidding. You can read it here. My favorite quote is attributed to Channel 4 reporter Sorious Samura, “When will foreign correspondents be foreign?”

I started with an anecdote, about a BBC World radio story broadcast to my California rental car radio. It was about a press tour organized by the Chinese authorities for foreign journalists to enter Tibet. The BBC was not invited, so the reporter interviewed a USA Today journalist about how the event had been interrupted by Tibetan monks protesting. Obviously what is happening between Tibet and China right now is very serious, but I still find this particular story silly. The journalist was reporting about a staged media event he hadn’t even been to, and his main source was another Western journalist.

I’m not targeting the BBC or this particular journalist in particular (he must have filed hundreds of different stories, and maybe even speaks Chinese). I just think the fact that a story like this is considered newsworthy is pretty depressing (especially since it must have been reported by a ton of other journalists already).

How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what’s going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what “the Green zone” in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?

Not for long, is what I think. There are too many alternatives, and I’m not even referring to bloggers around the world. The type of thing we do at Global Voices is meant to be a service to professional journalists.

The founder of Alive in Baghdad, a fantastic video website that broadcasts weekly reports by Iraqi journalists, once told me in New York that he has a hell of a time getting news media organizations to recognize that his crew aren’t “citizen journalists” but actually, real, professional journalists who just happen to be Iraqi.

Sooner or later, qualified local perspectives will become what people prefer to hear, rather than what editors defer to when a situation becomes too dangerous for Western journalists to report from. It’s wrong not to have news from a faraway place, simply because there is no longer money to fly foreign correspondents there.

The internet has the effect of making international journalists even more accountable to global audiences that before. Just see Global Voices’ current China coverage. Yikes. Chinese bloggers are pouncing all over Western media inaccuracies. On openDemocracy, articles by authors from the region offer background on political history and media misunderstandings.

When the panel discussion in Los Angeles ended, the BBC’s wonderful Richard Sambrook graciously stood up and agreed with with some of what I said. In his own blog he wrote, “I agree the model of Foreign Correspondent is becoming rapidly outdated and needs re-inventing, not least to have authenticity with the subject which is lacking from many blow-dried parachute journalists.” Sambrook also noted that the BBC regularly uses over 400 “local stringers” around the world.

I think this just helps show that the end of what I consider old-fashioned foreign correspondence is coming closer. It’s not about where a journalist is born or not, it’s about listening and respecting people who are different, and trusting them to have the integrity to describe their own situation. I’m not saying it’s easier. But it could be better.

Here’s a brief report on American foreign media consumption. The part about Anna Nicole Smith is of course the most interesting… Robin from Snarkmarket sent it to me.

In the future there will be no press releases. I thought about this last time I was working on a press release for a friend, doggedly making up fake quotes that would sound good in an article. It’s a stale and outdated format that will surely go out of fashion.

I had this thought confirmed the other day, talking to someone who founded a major web company. He said he always avoided press releases, because it was the perfect way to kill the momentum of any project launch. Once press releases get written, several layers of management get involved – and if the company is big enough so do the lawyers.

I still have wistful memories of the first time I wrote a press release about an activism project in high school that was copied almost verbatim in a Danish newspaper. But it’s definitely time to sound the death knell of the press release. Cool, honest companies just write what they think in their blog, in the voice of the people who work for them. If it’s creative commons licensed, the journalists can still just go ahead and copy it.

In 9 hours time I will be sitting on a panel at a United Press International (UPI) conference about the “next 100 years of media and journalism”. Looking very much forward to the day, with a truly impressive line up of speakers.

It’s going to be held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington DC where I was disappointed to learn that wifi costs $12.95 for the day (live-bloggers bring your credit cards). The organizers advise casual business attire and comfortable shoes (ok) and emphasize that “Weapons are not allowed in the building”. I am glad. Because there is nothing worse than a boring Power Point presentation when there are weapons in the building.

I am so sick of Danish news articles about immigrants and immigration that are written as though immigrants themselves were not reading the newspapers. Danish journalists write as though they were carrying on a very private conversation between themselves and other “real” Danes.

Well, here’s a piece of breaking news – Danish immigrants actually watch Danish television. It took a research company called MediaCom more than 1000 interviews with families originating in different countries (that have very little to do with one another) to discover this.

D’uh. They live here! Of course they watch it, and their kids watch it too. And so what if they also watch Disney Channel, CNN, and… (wait for it)… Arabic satellite TV? A number of Danish newspapers and television stations all quoted the same Danish professor who has researched media and ethnic minorities.

He says, “It points in the direction of a strengthening of consumption of Danish media among ethnic minorities, and nuances the hypothesis (sic) about it being so dangerous that they are sitting watching satellite TV from their home country and thereby isolating themselves from Danish society.”

What hypothesis?? If we want immigrants to feel included in Danish society a good start would be to stop talking about them like they’re not listening. For the record, I would like to let Homeland Security in the United States know, that I occasionally watch Danish television on the internet while living in New York. I would also like to confess that I have watched Hispanic television at my grandmother’s house in Puerto Rico.

Anybody who thinks an Arabic soap opera is dangerous – or God forbid news from a different perspective – really needs to get out of the house more. You don’t automatically isolate yourself from a society by looking outwards and beyond it.

There’s a new branch of the Guardian Angels, called Cyber Angels. They don’t wear red berets and jackets. They sit at home in front of their computers, looking for trouble-makers on the internet. I met Guardian Angels founder, Curtis Sliwa, and a volunteer cyber angel. You can listen to the result, here.

Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day!

Now, I agree Jay Rosen’s (NYU) NewAssignment.net website is a really good idea. But shouldn’t we wait and see what they come up with before everybody starts raving about it. There is nothing on the site yet!

(It might just be me, but the word “ass” really jumps out in the title)

I am speaking for openDemocracy at a conference this weekend called Bringing the World Home Through Media at Yale University. It’s organized by Americans for Informed Democracy. On my panel are Media that Matters, Link TV, and The Interra Project. About 100 student journalists will be participating.

My colleagues bring you a new bilingual website for discussion about global environmental issues, chinadialogue. All comments and articles are translated into Chinese and English. It’s an interesting experiment, hopefully falling under “permissable online discussion” as China seeks solutions to polution from rapid development – and the whole world depends on it.

I just hit Denmark after a weekend of rock and roll at the Immergut Festival in Germany. I actually slept in a tent twice, but I made sure to complain about it the whole time. Having always missed out on Roskilde Festival in Denmark, I’d like to pretend that I’ve now had an authentic music festival experience, but we had shiny green backstage passes which meant no teenagers, no kebabs, no pushing for first row, and lots of free beer. I think the real thing involves a lot more mud and slobbering. It was educative all the same. Just ask me to say something about music piracy in German.

The writers convention in Ankelohe made me really want to write a book about climate change. Instead I wrote a short summary about the whole thing for openDemocracy. And so, in spite of desperately little contact with the internet this week, it’s been a productive journey. Back in New York on June 4.