I, Reporter

Folk Journalism?

In case you missed it, the Jim Lehrer NewsHour on 11/16 had a short piece on the rise of citizen journalism. It's got some good comments from J-Lab's Jan Schaffer, and cites a experimental site in Deerfield, N.H., called The Forum.

One thing that also intriqued me was a listing of the many names under which citizen journalism does its work -- participatory journalism, community journalism, hyper-local, grassroots, do-it yourself, bottom up, open source, social media, user- generated journalism, we media. ... One that I didn't hear, but have been thinking about in recent days is "folk journalism." Here's why I like that term:

Fresno Famous to Push for CitJ Disclosure

Jarah Euston, who runs the Fresno, CA community site Fresno Famous, yesterday posted "A Note on Disclosure" in her personal blog Spontaneous Orders. With a nod to my earlier article "Open CitJ Sites: Why Not Require Transparency?" (thanks, Jarah), she wrote:

"We’re making some changes soon at Famous, and have made every effort to build transparency into the experience. Famous will have a disclosures field at then end of every user-submitted story, and profile pages for all contributors..."

"Citizen Witnesses?" UK journalists wrestle with citJ

Today the UK news trade publication Press Gazette reports that the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is "proposing a new Code of Practice to cover "citizen journalists."

The article continues: "Mike Holderness, from the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ, said many union activists would rather call them 'citizen witnesses.' He added: 'The whole point, after all, is that we're increasingly dealing with reports and pictures from people who are not journalists.'"

"Citizen witnesses?" Um, well, eyewitness accounts are part of citizen journalism, but definitely not all of it...

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Youth Citizen Journalism and the $100 Laptop

Went to a fascinating talk the other night that put me in mind of how powerful a tool citizen journalism might be if it could be put in the hands the millions of young people around the globe. Unrealistic? Not if the plan for a $100 laptop as part of something called the One Laptop Per Child project is realized over the next few years.

"Norg" + Citizen Journalism = Better News? Maybe...

I just read a fascinating essay by journalist Will Bunch in Attytood, a flagship weblog of the Philadelphia Daily News (a major daily tabloid print newspaper). In "The New Philadelphia Experiment: Saving the Daily News," he argues persuasively for the survival of his news organization by letting go of paper. For instance, he writes:

"We are, and can continue to be, the front-line warriors of information -- serving up the most valuable commodity in a media-driven era. But that means we must be the message, not the medium, and so we must adjust to give consumers news in the high-tech ways that they are asking for, not the old-tech way that we are comfortable with."

Well said...  Although I don't think the attraction for the evolving news audience is "high tech," but rather more convenient, customizeable, updatable, searchable, and (perhaps above all) conversational.

I think there's ample room for citizen journalism in Bunch's vision of the future of news...

Open CitJ Sites: Why not require transparency?

Wherever there's an open forum where people can post citizen journalism or other kinds of stories or announcements, you'll find plenty of promotion and agendas. This is inevitable, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, I think -- as long as there's transparency.

And that's the problem...  Too many open citJ sites (especially those sponsored by news organizations) don't require or even facilitate transparency. That is, they generally don't require the people who post content to clarify how they're related to or involved in the story. This makes it difficult for the audience to put citJ and other contributed content into perspective.

Fortunately, I think this problem could be fairly easy to address...