The discussion was varied and passionate, focussing mainly on origination of content and how it should be sourced, used, attributed and remunerated. In today's online world so many channels of information are simply aggregated news items that it's hard to know where to draw the line between content and delivery mechanism. Trust was also a hot issue - how much was there for non-proven, non-regulated non-journalists? How should the end-user differentiate news from opinion. Was there a future for "citizen journalists" (or citizen storytellers as bbc likes to call them)?

Some views expressed support of an ultramodern ideology of dismantling all existing media corporations in favour of personally-tailored reading/listening/viewing outside of the mainstream media agenda. This really is the old Marxist argument concerning ownership of the means of production. With the advent of the web and the ease of publishing without fear of censorship, the means of production and thus power of publication have been returned to the people. The next challenge for them is to get their voice heard above the grinding behemoth of existing media and PR which exists to serve itself.

Others advocated "user-provisioned systems" working alongside existing corporations. This was demonsatrated by Paul Youlten, owner of Yellowikis.org, a user-populated database of commercial enterprises - a free, digital yellow pages. This was created in response to Wikipedia's reluctance to accept advertising - they will delete any page which is deemed to advertise. Mr Youlten saw this as a hypocritical move, as established corporations such as IBM and Apple Computer had pages of content concerning their businesses. Where to draw the line between information and advertising? Yellowikis isn't a perfect solution, but it exists in support of a principle which has ramifications throughout the "directory" system.

Another point addressed was how to provide motive or incentive for users to conribute content. Are they being exploited when they provide content to online newspapers or other organisations, often free of charge? Or is money the only motivation that most people respond to? The case of an online news venture in Korea where "journalists" are paid per page view was mentioned in support of this. The proliferation of news aggregators, such as Digg, a site with "non-hierarchical editorial control", would seem to preclude this theory, however, although there are no established statistics yet to show the staying power of Digg's contributors. Also, the July 7th london bombings last year saw a huge public influx of images and online discussion - this seems to have been a manifestation of a different incentive - one to form a community to share information or have one's voice heard.

My only problem with sites like digg are that i don't necessarily want the stories as voted for by it's user community. To use an analogy, the top 40 most popular songs, as voted for by Joe Public, generally do not reflect the music I listen to. In this case the prevailing opinion is opposed to mine. In the field of news this is also the case, and means I need to either go to an existing online provider of content with a journalistic voice or style that i like, or find an aggregator with a similar readership to myself - a move which seems perilously similar to aligning oneself with established newspapers with readerships based around their editorial opinion, or reading a music chart or magazine with a specific target market.

One aspect that became apparent was the circular nature and solipsistic attitude of some current web enthusiasts. Are news corporations really so malign that they have generated this amount of mistrust? I don't think so. The problem is that as the web develops ever more rapidly, every new technology makes the cycle of use begin again - how many blogs exist with people writing things like "Hi, I'm Mike, this is my new blog" in ways eerily reminiscent of "Hi, I'm Mike, this is my first website". Only now the tools are easier to use, the out-of-the-box design is better and the playing field has widened to such an extent that it's much, much easier to find a link to something or get linked to and become a global phenomenon, or not.

We're in danger of the media becoming the message again, with more and more sites based around metadata - links to other people's content - and less and less genuine content being created. As someone pointed out, there's very little chance of anyone going to see movies in a cinema that cost little or nothing to make, or wade through thousands of hours of freely posted mp3s, so why should we put up with this in the textual arena.

Just as everyone was saying a decade ago - content is king. As new and interesting creators are discovered they will inevitably be assimilated into a media juggernaut that is increasingly cross-polinating. Murdoch owns myspace, the Guardian and BBC continue to run mammoth websites alongside their existing old-media, tiny record labels can sell via iTunes. We need innovators but they can't and won't exist in a closed world forever. The media are traditionally the voice of the people, and as long as the people want old media they will continue to exist.