I, Reporter

CitJ notes for German journalism class

In a short while I'll be speaking via iChat to a class of German journalism students from the Henri Nannen School of Journalism in Hamburg.

Ulf Gruener, the faculty member who invited me to speak, wanted me to go over some of the basics of citizen journalism. He said it's not yet too widely practiced in Germany. Since I don't speak or read German, I'm a bit hampered in proving or disproving that assertion. However, it does seem that there's at least some citJ movement in Germany...

Whither Wales?

There's been a good discussion going on at Poynter Institute's E-Media Tidbits group blog about a less than enthusiastic assessment of citizen journalism's prospects from a surprising source. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, probably the premier example of webifying the wisdom of the masses, suggested at a Columbia J-School event I attended that in terms of straight reporting of the deep kind, we shouldn't expect citJers to make their mark. Take a look at that original posting and the comments from others, or share your thoughts with us below.

ONA CitJ Highlights

I'm at the National Newspaper Association annual meeting in Oklahoma City, where I'm scoping out citizen media interest among community newspapers around the country. Before I post about that, though, I had some highlights from the Online News Association annual gathering in DC last week, where much of the citizen media discussion came at the “Developing New Voices” panel I organized.

Here are a bunch of items worth noting:

Sunshine Week: Prime Opportunity for Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalists, grab your boots and warm up your keyboards! Sunshine Week is almost here -- one of the best opportunities to demonstrate to your communities, audiences, and news-biz counterparts just how vital and compelling citizen journalism can be.

Sunshine Week is an annual campaign spearheaded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). It encourages news organizations to highlight current threats to open government.

The whole point of Sunshine Week is to stem the creeping (well, OK, leaping) tide of government secrecy, thus ensuring democracy. This goal certainly is not the sole domain of professional journalists and news organizations. Citizen journalists can -- and should -- visibly and notably pitch in on this effort. We have so much to offer.

This year, Sunshine Week is March 12-18. So start planning now for great coverage of goverment secrecy issues on your beat. Here are some tips to get you started...

Payment, Paparazzi, and Peril: CitJ Debate Today at the Guardian

Today in the "Organ Grinder" section of the Guardian web site, John Plunkett brings us a live debate (well, via a blog posting with comments from readers and a selected panel of experts) on citizen journalism. I've read through most of it and it's quite intriguing, if somewhat basic.

Here's one snippet that caught my interest...

Meeting of Two Mindsets

The Media/Blogger Summit yesterday was a meeting of two mindsets. So I guess it’s not surprising that some folks there described blogs as transformative, while others pooh-pooh’d them.

Chris Ahearn of Reuters, for example, used his talk in the very early part of the day to essentially liken bloggers to a cheap date! He called them "overrated," though in the same breath said they were great for the news industry because they were such an inexpensive way to open news organization’s discussion with audience.

By contrast ...

'Media and the Age of the Blogger' Summit

Still digesting a thought-provoking day at the Media in the Age of the Blogger Summit here in New York. I can say that the otherwise excellent gathering, with high-level speakers and audience, sadly had little to contribute on the trend of citizen media. Lots of good insights on blogging though, and a day well spent.

Here's a piece about it from high-tech commentator Michael Malone, an organizer of the meeting, which he calls the first annual summit between the Mainstream media and the blogosphere [Disclosure: I know Malone well, and helped develop his Silicon Insider column on ABCNEWS.com, where I edited it for a number of years as business senior producer.] Malone's column gives a good overview too of the Wednesday night keynote by blogger Roger L. Simon, whose Pajamas Media mega-blogger site launch happens Nov. 16. Simon's own blog has some discussion of the Malone piece. And there's more on Simon's keynote at The Adventures of Chester blog (blogger Josh Manchester was at the summit as one of several representatives of the blogosphere).

More after the Friday-Saturday Online News Association annual meeting...

Citizen Media Summit

An interesting discussion came up during the Citizen Media Summit about whether or not you're better off leaving citizen journalism contributions on your site unedited.

Confab Time

It's online conference week for me, starting Monday with a very stimulating Citizen Media Summit sponsored by J-Lab at the University of Maryland's College of Journalism. I'll post later on about the program, which sparked a lot of ideas (not to mention the really high caliber of attendees, which sparked even more). Meanwhile, one of the panelists, Steve Yelvington, live blogged the first and second panels. Check his posts out; the second one has the beginnings of an interesting exchange about liability over edited vs. unedited citizen journalist contributions.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, I'll be participating in an interesting business-focused gathering called Media, Communications and Technology in the  Age of the Blogger. This is one I've posted about before. I've been in regular contact with the organizers, who are aiming for a program that looks hard at what business models are making sense for new media. They've assembled a strong program.

Finally, there's the annual conference of the Online News Association on Friday and Saturday. I helped out a bit on this one, mainly by putting together a fun little podcast walking tour of media landmarks of Manhattan, where the conference is being held. Check it out on the ONA conference site here or here or go to a Newsday.com tourism site for attendees here or even just go directly to the MP3. Since it's my first podcast, forgive the technical limitations. Your comments and critiques are welcome.

Post-NYPA Thoughts

As Amy and I are fond of telling folks who are contemplating jumping into citizen journalism -- expect surprises! And that's about what we got in our address to a couple of dozen owner/publishers of small weekly community newspapers at the NY Press Association meeting we attended at Lake Placid.

About 10 minutes in we tossed our script and spent most of the rest of the 90-minute presentation talking about two things that the audience was keenly interested in ...