The rebranding, proposed by Jay Rosen – a press critic, a writer and a professor of journalism at New-York University – satisfied the mainstream editorial geeks. Still, you can find on the web enough of endless lexical discussions about citizen journalism by editorial über-geeks. That’s the thing with editorial people: they love to debate the terms. I’d like to keep this post short, so you can judge by yourself on Wikipedia or on newassignment.net. I call it the Oxford comma syndrome.

Edit: In a comment left on this, Mr Jay Rosen said he “never proposed re-branding citizen journalism as networked journalism” and stated I made up this rebranding. This is true, of course. I had (and still have) the impression that the “citizen journalism” concept lost kind of its appeal after being discussed and criticized by the media corporations and the professional journalists. From “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism” (definition by Jay Rosen) the concept evolved to network journalism (where citizen and journalists co-produce news).

Mr Nobody wants its 15 retweets of glory

With the Internet, journalists and media people discovered that Mr Nobody not only had something to say about almost everything but that he could do it online, easily and for few pennies. Worse, Mr Nobody could even express himself about what established media were publishing or broadcasting, to the point where it challenged the well balanced order between those-in-the-know and the rest of the world. Well, the rest of the world can now take the floor.

« Citizen journalism », as an editorial concept, opposed « quality journalism ». The latter, as explained by Charlie Beckett, « was for quality people: educated, opinionated, influential, responsible, concerned and powerful. (…) It was different in production, style and above all, subjects and story selection. It was more expensive and expansive, but it was defined primarily by its self-conscious intelligence and its concerns with identifying and arbitrating the exercise of power. »

In the early ages of « citizen journalism », a certain taste of revenge could be discerned against The Media. If not the power, at least the news would be given back to the people. It would be all about who would write it first and tell the truth, the one that The Media did not want you to know. And, in some aspects, it happened.

A possible vision of The Media (c)Micah Wright

Then, came the joke about the « citizen dentist ». Then, more and more journalists discovered they could blog too (and that it was good fun). Oh, and suddenly newspapers started to disappear – or to lose tremendous amount of money, editorial staff were compressed, TV channels discovered erosion in their audience curves – all of this was Internet’s fault. Even the decrease in car sales is attributed to the Internet. Hackers download their cars via BitTorrent, I am told.

Smart news organizations got the hint they could well leave a (virtual) seat in their newsroom to all those Nobodies out there. I’d be harsh if I compared it to the empty chair my family left at the Christmas table for the occasional homeless guy bold enough to knock at our door and be invited to join the feast (he never showed up) but it does echo, doesn’t it? If that was a timid start, it went further. Nowadays, writes Charlie Beckett in the Guardian, networked journalism « takes into account the collaborative nature of journalism: professional and amateurs working together to get the real story, linking to each other accross brands and old boundaries to share facts, answers, ideas, perpectives. It recognizes the complex relationships that will make the news. And it focuses more on the process than on the product. »

The first aspect of networked journalism is, therefore, to publish under the brand umbrella of a news organization some blogs written by non-journalists (as well as by journalists from the organization). This single co-existence of products of different nature is enough to raise infinite debate about role, advantages, qualities and flaws of contemporary journalists versus bloggers. Not to mention the famous « win-fuck » deal under which most of agreements between bloggers and medias were concluded: the former work and write to be published on a famous news website in exchange for visibility and notoriety. I’ll let you guess who’s the winner.

It’s not about the product, it’s about the process

More interesting to me is this co-production process where non-journalists and journalist work together on a story – whatever the final product might be (a text, a video, a multimedia). Of course, media have not discovered only yesterday they could use people as sources. For every major far away catastrophy, magazines were buying amateur photographs or video footage. As Frédéric Filloux phrases it, « today Twitter has replaced the checkbook ».

Rue89 and Mediapart are two French news websites built on this editorial model, amongst many others. Some major news organizations have added the network journalism model into their mix. « This is the idea that traditional journalism opens itself up to the public » explains Charlie Beckett. « It uses new technologies to include the citizen in every aspect of news -gathering, production and publication. It means using a lot of jargon like crowd-sourcing, social networking, wikis and Twittering. » This is considered by some as a revolution. « That means, adds Mr Beckett, that journalists must accept that they can no longer be the privileged gatekeepers to information nor the sole arbiters of editorial judgement. »

To be honest, as a casual user, I haven’t really noticed the difference when reading the final products. Maybe because the new process works so well you don’t feel the difference. Who cares how many cooks elaborated the risotto as long as it tastes good? Or, possibly, I trust the brand and that’s enough. I read New York Time stories because I trust the New York Time. They have a tremendous fact checking system, they are a reference in the media landscape (and yet, they’re losing money), I like their style. And I read bloggers as well, with different expectations, as noble as the ones leading me to NYT, delivering me a similar yet different pleasure.

Although, networked journalism is used a lot for covering local news, especially in the USA and in the UK. Networks of « hyperlocal » journalists are set up and partnerships created, as Jemina Kiss and Heather Christie tell in Citizen journalism: can small be bountiful?

I must admit I don’t care the slightest for local news. Possibly because I live in Brussels, possibly because I was raised in the countryside where anonymity was at best a dream.  My field is the world, not my street corner.

For news corporations, perhaps in an attempt to help their staff swallow the bitter pill, networked journalism is more critical than a single production process. It is « both a business model and a practical strategy to secure the future of journalism and its freedom » concludes Mr Beckett. He goes further in another article: « anyone seeking to sustain freedom of expression should seek to build networked journalism ».

Wait – should we feel concerned?

We can proudly say we practiced network journalism in two occasion on the European Parliament website. When we handed over the Headlines keys to the young journalists during European Youth Media Day – a fun, tremendous, exhausting experience if you’d ask me. And when we proposed to our audience to send their photos to illustrate a story scheduled in advance. The photographer whose work we appreciated the most was invited to Strasbourg where he could cover the session and propose a slideshow.

There are different obstacles to get over before we can really integrate such a process in our editorial workflow. You may not agree with the importance of it, but, as civil servants, we are bound to respect the institutional Rules of conduct. Those are a good life line to ensure our editorial strategy introduced in a previous post.

Second, the real interest of network journalism lays in the multiple sourcing about an event. The thing is: most of what we cover takes place few hundred meters from where we sit. We don’t really need someone to twit us what an MEP has just said in a Committee meeting. We are watching it via the streaming. Or we have an editor there. Or a Press Attaché.

Of course, opinions, understandings, comments about the subject we report  expressed by external people (citizen, experts, journalists) would definitely add great value. I’m afraid we can’t follow this trail yet. As an institutional website, our role is to reflect a fair balanced view of MEPs’ opinions and decisions, as expressed by their speaches, their votes, their work. We are more located at the source of possible discussion between citizen and MEPs than at the heart of it – as an editorial news website.  We’d better let our visitors react and produce their own content rather than co-produce our stories with some of them.

This doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear the voice of the people – quite the contrary as our Facebook chats, comments and editorial policy hopefully demonstrate. And yes, we would like to bring this back to the flagship website. In a later post, I’ll try to expose the leads we’d like to follow for our new online digital strategy. Before that, there are still other editorial models that are interesting to have a look at.

This post is part of a series about online editorial models.
Online editorial models #01 – Ours
Online editorial models #02 – Link journalism
Online editorial models #03 – Networked journalism
Online editorial models #04 – Media-enabling journalism aka lol-journalism
Online editorial models #05 – The Huffington Post case

Sources

Citizen journalism on Wikipedia

Network Journalism Versus Citizen Journalism Versus the Myriad of Other Names for Social Media in the News World

Press freedom: The public are now becoming partners with journalists in the production of news by Charlie Beckett (The Guardian)

An alternative term to the use of Citizen Journalism, proposed by Jay Rosen on P2P Foundation.

What Is Quality In Networked Journalism? by Charlie Beckett.

Editorial Diversity: Quality Networked Journalism by Charlie Beckett.

The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism by Frédéric Filloux on Monday Note.

Citizen journalism: can small be bountiful?

Citizen journalists’ shine a light on their own communities (The Guardian)

Standstill...

This week started with a huge system failure. The first thing we noticed was that “Outlook” was not responding anymore. It left – for half a day as we discovered later – with no mention of when it would come back, and we couldn’t write e-mails to each other anymore.

It became a day of actual communication in the Web Communications unit. Our so loved synopses were brought around by helpful colleagues who had printed out several copies. Instructions were given orally and I must say – it was very pleasant to see a friendly face leaning on the doorframe of my office at regular intervals. Besides, this sudden movement was also a useful exercise for our stiff backs.  Conclusion – probably we should do this more often to change the routine.

We also couldn’t publish any articles for long time that day. Our impressive publishing machine, alias IM-Press (what an IM-Posing and IM-Portant name!), had taken an extra holiday… He – I somehow assume IM-Press is a “he” although you could draw parallels with “empress” and “princess”- obviously thought: “if “Outlook” can do it, I can as well”, although his working regime is actually much lighter.

IM-Press is one of those friends you can’t really rely on. Like a cat. Sometimes it decides to play little games with us during the plenary session – the busiest time for the Parliament and its communication teams. Of course, there’s a lot of work on his shoulders during the peak hours – everybody wants to publish something and that in 22 languages… but then IM-Press just says: “Nope, not with me…” and goes for a cigarette – or wherever, nobody really knows. This behaviour makes us incandescent.

That day he was in a particularly funny mood. He came back together with “Outlook” and then, sometime later, I realized that there were no articles at all on my page anymore. Yes, of course, then I had to play with him a little bit, talk softly, and… yes, finally it worked out.

We should have somebody here with the job description: “IM-Press whisperer”. Or we should be clear enough and express to IM-Press that he needs to impress, or he will be EX-Press!

Well, this is just for you to know. If you sometimes don’t find the long awaited articles on our website for some time and in none of the offered languages – think of our “enfant terrible” and have compassion with us.

Back to normality… until next time?

Sic transit gloria elegi or something like that – but was it worth it? From our professional point of view, and taking in account the fact that our job is mainly to publish news about the European Parliament in 22 languages and in a way my Latvian Grandma can understand, yes it was. And I am not only referring to the professional fun we had, despite the stress and the really heavy load of work. No, I am refferring to concrete figures: the stats of our website. Now, I will not give any figures, but I can provide some comparison.

This was the night.

In the first six months of 2009, the European Parliament’s website welcome 93% of the visits, 97% of the visitors and dispatched 87% of the viewed pages it had during the full year 2008. Had the Elections been set up a week later, we would have had in six months the equivalent of last year frequentation and consultation.

During this first semester, our monthly average number of visits was 1.85 times the monthly average for 2008, visitors average was 1.94 and viewed pages 1.74.

Well, not so bad for a *boring* institution and *complicated* elections.

May – best month ever
May 2009 will remain for ever not only as the first month in which I became closer to my forties than my thirties, but also as the month with the highest frequentation we ever had: 2.92 times our 2008 monthly average for the visits, 3.15 times for the visitors and 2.09 times for viewed pages.

In the first six months of 2009, the European Parliament’s website welcome 93% of the visits, 97% of the visitors and dispatched 87% of the viewed pages it had during the full year 2008.

And what did all those visitors read most? Here are the ten most read articles on our Headlines in May:

1° United in diversity: Rules for the European Parliamentary elections

2°- “Internet has to be free, but not regulation free” – Harbour on telecoms package

3°- FAQs on political parties and party politics

4°- No agreement on working time directive opt out

5°- Mums and dads at home with newborns: how long should they have off?

6°- Election countdown: 10 things you should know about the European Parliament

7°- You decide what tomorrow’s news will be

8°- European elections – Delicious!

9°- Quick A- Z of MEPs’ duties and obligations

10°- Animals used in science, seal ban debated Monday

What I like in this top ten is the fact that the digital crowd which came to visit our website because they, somehow, have heard about the European elections took the opportunity to read some stories on other subjects. Half of those most read stories deal with news from the Parliament and not specifically with the elections themselves. It’s one thing to repeat and repeat that the European parliament actually decide on every day’s life issues, it is another to read it on the website.

June: almost as good as May.

We were all very happy when the European elections days finally came, because most of us had worked on the communication campaign and the editorial coverage since January 2008. It was a long expected Election night the one we had (and twitted in 22 languages) and we were relieved that it finally took place. Now, we have to deal with some kind of elections blues, but that’s another story.

But on a purely statistical ground, the elections days came too soon. One week later and June would have beaten May 2009. June made just 2% less visits and visitors than May.

The ten most read stories of June 2009 were:

1°- Getting ready for a new start — what’s on the agenda?

2°- Centre-right clear winners in European elections

3°- European elections: where to find the results

4°- After the elections – now what happens?

5°- ONE: 1 vote

6°- EU-twitter !

7°- 2009 Euro Elections- turning the tide against apathy

8°- Choice boxes – a conversation across Europe

9°- THREE: 3 main institutions of the EU

10°- More FAQs on the European elections

We reached the peak of the electoral dramaturgy and it is quite logical that “results” and “next steps” are found at the top of this podium.

Since the Elections, the traffics has come back to last year’s level at the same period. It’s a bit soon to see if we’ll keep some of our new visitors in our daily frequentation. We usually do: after our last major banner campaigns, we increased our daily average by 15-20%.

Summer time being definetely better spent in all other kind of surfing and outdoors activities, our daily frequentation will now enter its sleepy phase until September. During this summer break, we will publish some light contents on the European Parliament’s website and, possibly, totally different posts on this blog. Let’s keep in touch, as they say.

Whenever one of our European Hemingways goes on vacation, say because he/she has worked like hell for some European Elections campaign  in the last eighteen months, well, the writing and publishing flow in his/her language suddenly stops, depriving millions of fellows common language speakers of the latest important news, such as our dear President being ready to go to Iran.

(Open bracket)
Iran, where, suprisingly, not only do citizens actually care about voting in elections but also massively demonstrate in the streets and find the guts to fight armed forces, militia and other religious coarcition when they know their votes aren’t respected. They don’t want a change of regime, like, say, overthrowing the Islamic Republic, they want the republic’s rules to be applied and their vote to be respected. Meanwhile, in civilized and democratic EU, more than one out of two Europeans didn’t bother to vote.  Too complicated. Not democratic enough. Too far away. Compared to easy ongoing Iran where the Guardians of the revolution make sure, everywhere and all the time, that you wear the right kind of clothes, hum the authorised tune and use your cell phone only when the State wishes so, expressing a democratic choice, having your say, is such a piece of cake.
(Closed bracket)

Hemingway's typewriter. Yep, the real one. (cc) Shiny Things on Flickr

We don’t have official back-up but we have some unofficial ones. We ask colleagues from other Units, we ask our trainees, we even use translators if the leave is expected to be for a long time. The aim is to keep the website fairly alive in all languages and to reduce the burden of our missing Orwell, so he/she doesn’t find a too high pile of synopsis on his/her desk when coming back. They tend to loose all  their sun tan at once otherwise.

Being French, I act as Florent‘s shadow when he’s on leave. That is, if I don’t have too much to coordinate, which was happily the case this week. Florent is off I don’t know where, I was myself back from Andalusia, thank you very much, and we now live in a quiet realm between the Elections and the first Plenary session, when we try to recover before the craziness starts again. There is not that much to coordinate yet. So I wrote the stories in French, from the synopsis crafted by our weekly appointed Albert Londons and approved by Steve.

All cars are on the same track but every pilot is alone in his car and is responsible for the quality and the beauty of the race. You, dear readers, are the passengers.

Moving to the role of editor when being a coordinator is like becoming pilot in a rally race when you usually work at the stand.  At the stand, we prepare the race, we fix the car, we talk to the engineers and the meccanics, we handle the external pressure, we draw the roadmap with the pilots. In the car, the co-pilot provides the synopsis and, then, the pilot is on his own. He writes. He adds to a common script the flavour of the style, the quality of the language.  All cars are on the same track but every pilot is alone in his car and is responsible for the quality and the beauty of the race. You, dear readers, are the passengers.

This is what I love most.

I often say that I think being a web-editor in our team is amongst the best job in all the institution. You learn a lot about the European affairs, you cover news, you meet VIPs and European actors. And you write. The job combines all advantages of belonging to a really cool and professional team with the self-satisfaction and the creativity of real personal work. Another bonus is: as a writer, you know when your job is done – it’s when your story is published. At the end of the day, you can see what you’ve achieved. It’s online.

I can do all what editors do and this is really cool.

Apart from the writing pleasure, sitting behind the wheel for a week allows me to check on the daily life and work of our García Márquez lot. How long does it take for a blue-fish like me to write and publish the full story? How many synopses a day is really too much? Do our gears and tools, content management system and editing formulars work smoothly? It gives me a different look on the synopses themselves. I read them everyday but I don’t use them for writing. This is a totally different thing, mind you. When being a pilot, I can criticize a quote left by Steve, laugh at some answers given in interviews, complain about the length, the structure. I can do all what editors do and this is really cool.

I can even yell from my desk (or, even better, by passing by my fellow editors’ desks): “I’ve published!” after one of those either long or too institutional pieces we have to produce every now and then.

Of course, even when acting as an editor only for a week, there is always a missing part: the synopsis writing where the real business of journalism lies. Sourcing the story, finding the proper angle, building a structure, getting quotes, working with a peer. Cutting, adding, milking… This demands more involvement in our editorial system and more time. You can’t be a tourist. 21 other pilots count on you for their ride.

Florent comes back soon. I know he will grin a bit at the French website – even if it lightens their return, editors don’t like when someone else published on “their” headlines. (Some of them even rewrite everything that was published when they were away). I’ll hand him over they keys and I’ll return to my booth, at the stand. There are races everyday and someone has to coordinate all this mess the pilots leave behind.

As I am sure you know, even if those elections we’ve been talking about and working for for so long are European, the electoral procedures (e.g. who can vote, how and when to vote) are handled by Member States under national laws. This explains, amongst many differencies, why some countries will vote on 4 June, others on 5, 6 or 7 June. You may imagine that gathering the datas from all 27 Member States, sorting out the elected Members of the European Parliament in existing political groups and drafting a clear picture of the new hemicycle’s balance of power will be nothing but a tremendously difficult task. So, that was the point of the meeting, as well as presenting the editorial coverage of the event by the different editorial teams.

Some members of our Web Team before the meeting.

Since Steve is in a personal mission to evaluate the real chances of a candidate country to join the EU, I was designated to speak in the name of our Unit. I sat in the front desk, next to the members of the Heads-of-Unit-secret-society, and I was written down as the last speaker on the agenda. Our Director made it clear he didn’t want us to be speaking for too long. Pressure. Last one to speak after six talkative others. Stress. When my time came, I could see in the audience’s eyes the tiredness, the hungriness, the deep desire to throw at me whatever they had to hand in order to shut me up and be on time at the cafétéria. Or maybe those were just my personal feelings. So I spoke, fast, and of course I forgot to say what I really wanted to. Hence this post.

A year ago

Last year, at the same period, our web team was producing content in 22 languages for one online platform: the Headlines of the European Parliament. True, we also wrote and published contents for some other sections of the website, but our bread and butter were the Headlines. Last May, a small team (Gaëlle, Eirini, Fred and Sophie) was finalizing the concept and design of the Elections website we opened last January. Our colleagues from the tech team were proposing a new content management system to feed the Election section. Steve and I were working on workflows analysis and new ways of coordinating things. In our minds, we had this blog project and some vague desire to go further online, to extend our presence outside of the main website. The editors, gathered in small team, were working on projects with potential: e-ambassadors, podcasts, partnerships, new editorial products. Our direct authorities were both interested and sceptic when we were mentionning Facebook or Web 2.0.

And look at now: the same team is publishing daily on no less than six editorial platforms: our Headlines, the Election website, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. We also maintain a Googlemap with all locations of 3d installations and choices boxes in EU and a Delicious page with all websites dedicated to the European Elections we’ve heard about. We have the YaBs project – they all left the nest and some are super close to reach their target. We have a banners campaign running (2 200 different kind of e-banners shown in 27 Member States). We have interactive features where people can leave comments, vote, propose – and moderating those take a lot of time. We have multiplied our daily frequentation by three – and only a third of those new visitors comes from the e-banners campaign.

We secured a twelve-can-fit-in-room for the thirty of us. We’ll be seated tight, elbows to elbows, but we know each other well enough. You don’t need much space to twit, do you?

But six wasn’t enough. So we decided to create 22 Twitters accounts (one by language, as you guessed) to cover the Election night. From 4 to 7 June, we’ll tell you everything about this event, which is as close as covering the Cannes festival as we will ever get, in 140 signs at a time. We’ll lead you to the most interesting debates: Euronews, France 24, europarltv and some Spanish television will organize live debates at the European Parliament on Sunday, June 7th. 80 different TV channels have planned to come to Brussels to cover the results. They’ll do stand-ups in every corners of the main buildings – except in one. Our own little corner. We secured a twelve-can-fit-in-room for the thirty of us. We’ll be seated tight, elbows to elbows, but we know each other well enough. You don’t need much space to tweet, do you? We’ll be at the heart of things, we’ll update Facebook and Flickr and we will publish slideshows of voters, of backstages, of TV crews and stressed journalists. If you like men in denim carrying wires, you sure don’t want to miss that. And of course, come 22h00 and you’ll get the first results. The first comments. The first analysis.

If you like men in denim carrying wires, you sure don’t want to miss that

We are very excited by the prospect of this Election night. And I am very happy and proud of the team. It is true that we’ve been working real hard and we all would like our life back. But we’ve never been so close to our readers. While I can read everyday on the French blogosphère that people are not interested in those elections, that nothing is available to know more and other pessimistic analysis, the appetite for our content has never been so high. And we actually feel it.

That’s what I wanted to say, during this meeting.

Meanwhile, we’ve opened our Twitter’ accounts. Here is the link to the English one (you don’t need a Twitter account to follow it). If you’re interested in one specific language, they’ll all soon be available on our Election website. If you can’t wait, drop a comment below and we’ll answer with the correct url.

Oh, and don’t forget to vote.

Never on Sunday? Hmm. Though it was not the first time that I heard an excuse about not voting, it hurt. The reason is difficult to explain. It goes beyond the fact that I work for the European Parliament, beyond my strong faith in the EU. How can I tell people that (whatever) their vote is valuable without being labelled as a brainwashed eurocrat? I am searching to do it through a story… Maybe Europe is an ugly frog that can turn into a prince if we kiss it? No, that’s not it. How is Europe (conveniently?) seen today by many people? As a big bad wolf. That’s it, that’s my story and that’s my reason for voting, however over simplistic it might look to some.

Europe, a big bad wolf? - Photo by dinonikk on Flickr

Once upon a time there was a big bad wolf called Europe (the taurus story is a myth as we all know). While walking in the forests, it devoured all human beings it crossed: bad and good. They made him move to the left, to the middle or to the right -according to where his stomach weighed heavier. Sometimes the human activity inside of him brought the best out of him -some people made him lean to a field and think “why not plant a flower here?”- or the worst -some made him crash all flowers it met on its way… The reactions among the people that were lucky enough to stay out of his stomach varied: others watched him with fear, anger or disgust, while others with awe, astonishment, sympathy or just indifference. Whatever their feeling, they just watched him, unable to take responsibility and act to change a situation that deep down they did not really like. Sometimes they even said “why bother? The big bad wolf is too far to reach me!”. Until the big bad wolf invaded their secret garden and smashed their own flowers. And then they cared but it was a bit too late to act… “The rest is silence” (as Shakespeare would say).

I might be caricaturing, but I am sure you all know what am talking about. Responsibility for our (in)actions. Whether the EU is “too far” and can communicate with us as well as a wild animal, there is no excuse for inactivity. And by inactivity I mean not voting in the forthcoming June elections of the European Parliament. The wolf in my story devoured everybody it met without distinction, without asking for permission, but luckily in today’s democratic world we can have our say as to whom it will absorb via one very valuable but at times disregarded thing: our vote. Am not saying the European Parliament is indeed destroying every good thing on this planet -I believe quite the contrary in fact- but I can accept the idea that there are good and bad people in it, some efficient ones and some inefficient. Just like everywhere else in our society. But it could be that the EU goes into a whole different direction than the one we want it to go. Do we really want to stand by and watch our worst fears turn into reality? It’s up to us to make the reality the way we want it to be… And to have no regrets whatsoever -because, whatever the outcome, at least the not yet born will not blame us for being passive observers.

Lack of knowledge about “complicated EU stuff” and no time to read the online election pages that we work so hard for or the myriads of relevant information available online or on paper?

Lack of knowledge about “complicated EU stuff” and no time to read the online election pages that we work so hard for or the myriads of relevant information available online or on paper? Here is the one thing you need to know in order to vote on 4-7 June, apart of course from the exact date of the election in your country: just like you have representatives in your national parliament, that you elect, you have also representatives in the European Parliament (coldly known as “MEPs” though they are as normal as the rest of us -and by “normal” I mean who laugh and cry too at times and who act according to their beliefs). They represent the citizens of the current 27 EU member states (yes, you too!) and decide on some issues that affect our daily lives -so yes, that would make their selection quite significant. It is as simple as that in my view.

Troubled about who to vote for? The political world obeys no fixed compass. Just follow your heart and choose the ones that you feel will plant the most flowers. Lets make Europe flourish in all possible ways -not only in spring but also in the summer (as of June) and in all the (difficult?) winters to come… Whether we “happily live ever after” (“and go to the sea shore” as Melina Merkouri adds in the unmemorable film “Never on Sunday”) or not is up to nobody else but ourselves.

The raw material for building up a story has a variety from one corner to another. Yesterday in Strasbourg type of skeletons have a more mechanical structure: topics debated in a vertical body with additional quotes to illustrate. The outcome can not be a binding story, it goes like it has first presented. Phrases “later that night” and “was talking also about” give to it more smoothness, but it is just a drop into the sea.

This is translating with almost no editing included.

Then there is a naked skeleton handing out the quotes, main issues and background. This structure gives the freedom to build up the final product in specific order depending what I find more important. Cast aside, sum up. Two lines of main issues and same amount of background, it makes one sentence, quote goes next to it, more material needed to combine that.

When building it up with a storyline going trough the whole text, there is no possible way to add everything first given, some mysterious things just do not fit in. Besides, some of the quotes are just big words, though well put, but impossible and pointless to use.

Melting phenomenon comes up, all the material is just vanishing. Some of it into the final form when other stuff will have a journey to the land of leftovers. Provided by naked skeleton, a sentence or two in an analysing way describing what it is all about would make it better and maybe even guarantee some more similarity in 23 languages.

In that case it is more editing then translating, the story is developing quicker in my mind then on the screen.

And then there is a well dressed skeleton, a story fully made and done. It is only a struggle for the position: usually a paragraph with some co-travellers will climb up the hierarchy pushing down ones blocking the way. But the joy of building a story from the beginning is cut down, it is already done. Breaking the whole thing into peaces for a fresh restart, I see no worth in that.

Here it is more translating, editing with short hands included as well.

Synopses vary a lot and descriptions mentioned above can occur in mixed way in our mailbox, so there is no time for final word in everdeveloping world of synopses. 23 languages with 23 characters, rotation included, moving towards to the evening when all colours agree. Good morning! It starts all over again.

For the conclusion, I have a quite nice relationship with the naked skeleton, though the guy seems a bit cold. On one hand it gives me enough freedom and opportunity to be creative, on the other hand I stick to the point not losing the focus.

One day I will make a synopsis by my own. Hmmm, how will it work out?

* Remixed Acrobat Reader slogan from early 90s.

How do you write an article in 22 languages about the very same subject without translating it ?

Not that we have anything against translation nor translators. They are the salt of the European Parliament good way of working. Since it is a fundamental right to run for an election whatever your skills, experience or knowledge might be, you cannot ask to the Members to be fluent in foreign languages. Hence the essential needs for translation, so that your chosen ones can read, work, amend, debate and vote in their mother tongue. 

But for our own editorial needs, translation wouldn’t do the job. We are a team of writers devoted to every street guys. We do our best to write in a comprehensive language, free of eurojargon, with its vitality, its charm, its colloquial ways of informing about the acts and decisions of the Parliament. All that flavour is sometimes lost in translation.

Also, when composing the team, we wanted as much as possible people from the journalism or communication fields. We work as closely as possible as a news agency would do. This requires specific profile with many talents – but adding the translating skills to the check list would have been asking for too much. 

So we brainstormed…

After some gallons of coffee, we came up with the idea of the synopsis. The synopsis is what the French having studied in Science-Pô would call “un plan détaillé”. It is a detailed draft of the story, a skeleton well structured, which provides all facts, quotes, figures, examples. It is written in a basic English to be understood by everyone. It is almost always written by two editors (it provides a second pair of eyes to challenge the structure) and it should be no longer than two pages. Before it is sent to the rest of the team, the synopsis is reviewed (and formally “approved”) by Steve, the Boss-of-the-pop, and sometimes revised by some of our colleagues from the Press Room who cover the Committees. We call them the “specialists” because they follow deeply all legislative matters and they are the best to check the facts and the political positions.

From the synopsis, the editors write. In their language. They stick to the synopsis but they add the flavor, the spices, the taste of the final text. All our stories are the same in 22 languages but none of them are identical. Our writers have their style, even their voice. For example, Gaëlle’s writings (she’s our French editor), sound like my eldest sister explaining me the European affairs. Without the naughty comments about my fashion tastes.

And we still brainstorm

Synopses belong to the list of most debated subjects in our staff meetings. Despite our common rules, the fact that we produce two to three of them every day lead to different perspectives. Different schools in the way we perform the task. Some prefers long (too long ?) and very well detailed synopses. Some write in their best English, which can be gratifying but also painful for others. Some editors have a touch for extremely short and bullet-points style synopsis – which others hate because they need more information to feed their prose with more details. That’s what we call diversity.

So we discuss, we exchange, we improve, we criticise - oh, and we complain a lot too. We even have theories explaining the different levels of quality in our synopses (one of them puts the blame on Steve but don’t tell him).

But we stick to the synopsis because there is no better way, to this date, to ensure a good European coverage of the Parliament’s news with the same pieces of information for 22 languages and 27 countries.

Next time you meet an editor, ask him or her about his/her favorite synopsis. And about the worst ones he had to write from lately. And don’t forget to change the subject after a while, after all, all those chats about works can be sooo dreadful.