By Adam Glenn
Last
night’s Paley Center panel on citizen journalism was a
great give-and-take between panelists ranging from practicing citJers to former
network news chiefs, and an audience of well over 100 and full of questions.
For my
part, I made the case that media and news organizations, in order to take full
advantage of the power of the Internet, must focus attention on the potential
for citizen journalism. There’s proof enough of that in the growing number of citizen media sites – I,Reporter has
identified more than 500 of them for the KCNN.org citmedia directory, while Placeblogger.com
has ID’d more than 2,100 similar placeblog sites
– and the fact they’re of such a remarkably wide variety in terms of who
contributes to them, what type of content they post and their geographic
scales. Panel moderator Merrill Brown put it this way, “Citizen journalism is not
an outpost.”
That
emergence is largely due to the dramatically dropping cost of barriers to
entry, with cheap electronic newsgathering gear and web publishing tools. But make
not mistake, it’s also because the mainstream media simply can’t do all the
work the community needs, especially in coverage at a very local level.
Yet I did
acknowledge citmedia is no panacea for the news business, somehow relieving us of
our responsibility to rethink what we do. That’s partly because content quality
issues continue to hamper citizen media, even though, as panelist Debra Galant of Baristanet pointed out, “readers keep you honest.” It’s also partly because
many citJ operations have deliberately ignored revenue-seeking models. As a
matter of fact, a recent J-Lab report shows more than half of citJ sites it
surveyed not only have no working revenue stream, but also don’t plan on
developing one. For many of them it’s about building community, not building
bank accounts. It’s a civic exercise, not an entrepreneurial one.
In my view,
citmedia is better thought of as a complement to, not a replacement for the
mainstream news media. Traditional news
organizations embracing citmedia can gain a level of engagement with their
audiences that’s too often missing in their current approach. It puts them in
the conversation, and recognizes media as less a bullhorn, more of a
conversation. As former CBS News head honcho Andy Heyward said, “Mainstream
media becomes on of a chorus of voices, competing in a world there there’s no
more barrier to entry.”
To achieve
this blend, though, we do have to shed some of our more petrified notions of
what journalism is -- without losing our grip on journalism essentials – and embrace
much of what citizen journalism has to offer the future of our profession.
For
instance, the notion of distributed journalism suggests that while the
traditional work of journalism– sustained, sophisticated, investigative
reporting and comprehensive coverage of complex issues – must continue for a
fully functioning democracy, there’s a real role for the citizen journalist.
That may mean contributing spot news from the scene of a disaster, or it may
mean collective research on a widely distributed issue, like Sunlight
Foundation has done with some success, or it may be just a super-powered web
version of the old news tip phone line.
After all,
the question of what is journalism is not a simple one at all. I have my own definition,
BBC News has its definition, Fox News has its definition. Which do we choose? Journalism
should and must reflect the changing community around it and adapt accordingly.
So I’m certainly glad for the Baristanet's and Current TV's of the world to push
our limits and help us collectively find our way.
I agree with your conclusions pretty much down the line, Adam. As a long-time journalist who has moved over to the new media side (and been there for a while now), I find it hard to understand the constant sniping back and forth between citizen journalists and traditional ones. In today's connected world, both are necessary and play important parts in the information flow.
Posted by: Les Blatt | October 11, 2007 at 07:25 AM