Notes from Tonight's BBC Interview

Just a few minutes ago, Adam Glenn and I were interviewed live on the BBC Radio 5 program "Up All Night." It was brief (about 10 min) but fun. I was pleasantly surprised that they also included Jason Pontin, editor of MIT's Technology Review, in this discussion.

Here's what we talked about, and some links that were mentioned...

First of all, if you want to hear this online, I supplied all the links earlier today.

Here's a synopsis of the BBC radio program, from my notes:

• I fessed up immediately that I, Reporter is brand new. Then I went on to explain that our main mission here is to address the skills gap in citizen journalism.

• Adam explained more about how citizen and professional journalism can be very complementary. Journalists generally already have too much on their plates.

• Adam noted that some pro journalists are embracing citizen journalists, and in fact many are leaders in early citJ projects. But some pro journalists and news organizations are nervous. Most mainstream news orgs have shrinking audiences -- they're being "nibbled to death by ducks." They're wary of any competitions. Also freelance journalists are nervous that this is lowering their market value.

• Jason Pontin said he fears that, based on the history of Wikipedia and the instantly-defunct LA Times wikitorials, that citJ will devolve into flames and endless bickering.

• I clarified that citJ is not synonymous with wikis. Just because anyone can do journalism (if they have the skills) doesn't mean that anyone should be able to edit any news story.

• Pontin said tonight that in the seminal niche-media treatise The Long Tail, Wired editor Chris Anderson claimed the problem with participatory media such as citJ is the "architecture of participation." Well, it actually appears that this concept was the brainchild of Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly media), who explained it in this speech: "Open Source Paradigm Shift." O'Reilly didn't really relate his architecture to journalism, and certainly not as a problem for citJ. However, Anderson did explore that connection in the context of the LA Times' failed wikitorial foray: To Fork or Not? (June 19, 2005). Personally, I'm not convinced that the architecture of participation issue is a significant concern for citJ. But I'm open to discussing that possibility.

LINKS MENTIONED ON THE AIR:

• OhMyNews: South Korean 100% citizen journalism
• YourHub: Community/citizen journalism venue offered by the Rocky Mountain News, a daily newspaper in Denver
• Citizen Paine: The foremost blog tacking citJ, by Ari Soglin
• Bayosphere: A fairly new, high-profile citJ venue for Silicon Valley, by former San Jose Mercury-News tech reporter Dan Gillmor. 
• The Long Tail is also a blog by Chris Anderson, who's working on a book on this popular theme.

ALSO: Technology Review apparently has a wiki for readers to discuss topics that interests them. This sounds cool, I'll have to jump in on that! I couldn't locate the link for that just now, but I'll add it as soon as I find it.

Comments

[Milt Martin]

Thanks for participating in the BBC interview.
We have placed a link to the interview in our technology columnists to jumpstart our local citizen training efforts. Our efforts are in the beginning stages, but we launched our site to get feedback on improving our efforts.

Our first response was from the managing editor and a little hostile but not too surprising. We will be reading your site regularly.

[hannu leinonen]

Link went to a story about freelancers getting fired because publishers think that bloggers do the same job cheaper or better. This is the way business is done - sorry.

BUT I think that publishers are stringing a robe for them self's if the idea is to make bloggers compite with freelancers.

Yes, you get good content from blogs - and it is for free, but why printed it? Why should public buy a newspaper, if bloggers do a better job than regular reporters? (See the robe?)

This is not what this is about! Reporters write for their readers. They know their readers. Bloggers write for other reasons and there is no continuety promised by bloggers. If one does not get paid, there is no responsibility to continue.

Please, let's not make this a question about who is eating at how "rice cup". Newspapers are putting out people because they are loosing readers. It would be nice if the big public would be turning to citizen journalism, but I don't think that the reason why people use internet. I think that there is more entertaining subjects that are interesting than our stuff.

[Amy Gahran]

Hannu wrote:

"Link went to a story about freelancers getting fired because publishers think that bloggers do the same job cheaper or better. This is the way business is done - sorry."

hmmmmm.... I'm not getting that in my browser. But I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC were to shuffle things around and we'd have to update the link.

Hannu, could you contact my by e-mail (amy@ireporter.org) and tell me more specifically about the link problem you're experiencing?

Thanks,

- Amy Gahran

[Ken Franklin]

I have been listening to the interview and found it very interesting. What has to be recognised at all times is that anyone can put up information on the net, so anyone can be a "citizen journalist". I am not though saying this is worse than normal journalism as there is extremism in that too.

We all have to be our own editors on the web as well as journalists.

[hannu leinonen]

Few days a go there was a news story about BBC and journalism training http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k5/june/june325.htm

I think that the interest for citj is much about the interest in media and digital literacy. The importance of it has been recognized very broadly. (In EU projects are poorly funded compared to many other issues.)

I did a media exchange project with BBC learning centre http://www.bbc.co.uk/21cc/
We let 15 to 16 years old students do television inserts in Jyvaskyla and London and exchanges stories. Reportages were broadcasted on BBC2.

BBC is very active in citizen journalism. We have worked with an organization called CSV (www.csv.org.uk) to launch an international project for training citizen journalists. CSV works much with BBC’s regional radio stations. (Email me, some one wants more information about this.)

Biggest sharing that BBC has is the Creative Archive. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/26/creative_archive.shtml

This is old news for many of you. But I’ll try to give a new angle on this. I have been following this and talked with Paul Gerhardt. He is the joint director. So there is something more than speculation in my comment.

BBC has about 25000 employees, but it will give free access to huge amount of it’s intellectual property (aca ”content”). BBC is a public broadcaster, but it is not a charity organization. It is responsible for it’s workers. The decision to share up to 20% of it’s content is a sound business decision. BBC will make a profit. Material that is shared is low resolution and cannot be used in television broadcasting or corporate presentations. It just creates a “hype”. (I think this is a great win-win idea.)

I commented on the story about freelancers getting fired because news papers are using bloggers. In BBC journalists will be able to keep their jobs, because BBC uses the help of citizen journalism.

(We live in a strange world. Even business is changing. We used to have just products and services, but know we have something called intellectual property – like copyrights, contacts, status or fame. We buy and sell possibilities – options to success. And somehow just giving something away makes you rich? BUT “rich” might not be “money”:-) It might be something that you can turn in to money, tough.)