I, Reporter

Paley Panel Prompts Discussion on Way Forward for CitJ

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.”

"Beyond the Anchor Desk"

By Adam Glenn

If you're in New York on  Tuesday, Oct. 9, try and come by a panel I'll be sitting in on at The Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio). I'll be in some amazing company for the 90-minute program, called "Beyond the Anchor Desk: The Rise of Citizen Journalism," There'll be folks like ex-CBS News President Andy Heyward, long-time TV documentary producer Jon Alpert and new media luminary Merrill Brown, as well as some rising citizen journalists themselves, including Debra Galant of Baristanet, a pair of young producers from Current TV and a poster from NowPublic.com.

The general aim of the panel is to give some historical perspective on what is now known as citizen journalism, but which has been evolving for a number of years. What I hope to contribute is my own sense of what citizen journalism is, and the extent to which its varied forms are spreading. But I'd also like to explore some of the failings of mainstream media that have led to citJ's rise (as well as some of the weaknesses of citJ), and ultimately the ways the two can complement each other.

Come by if you're in town. And I'll plan on posting further thoughts after the program, in case you miss it.

Public Radio Puts Our Project in Spotlight

Salt Lake City temple at dusk

Public radio station KCPW in Salt Lake City gave over a live, 20-minute midday interview segment yesterday, June 29, to I, Reporter's newly launched Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project.  Blair Feulner, station president and host of the KCPW's Midday Utah segment, interviewed me about the project, which partner Amy Gahran and I launched following a $90,000 News Challenge grant from the Knight Foundation in late May.

The radio interview focused on Boulder's global warming initiative and the journalistic challenges of  covering it, as well as the basic ideas behind citizen journalism. Feulner described the project nicely in his intro as a "new way to combine digital journalism and community interaction. ... the web-based project is meant to keep the focus on this single community issue, and add to the dialogue a variety of opinions from many sources, including the public, professionals, and city government.  The idea is to go beyond the spotty media coverage important community concerns often get."

Hear the full interview.

Ka-Ching! I, Reporter Wins News Challenge

I, Reporter co-founders Adam Glenn and Amy Gahran explain how they felt when they heard they'd won a Knight News Challenge grant. (Watch video)

We've got great news to share – an I, Reporter project last week was awarded one of the prestigious new Knight News Challenge Grants!

The whole citJ community has been abuzz since last year about this unusual news contest, in which the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promised a pot of gold (up to $5 million) to anyone who could come up with the big ideas to use digital news and information to transform real communities. 

Not to miss out on the fun, my I, Reporter partner Amy Gahran and I decided to put our already frequent brainstorming to work by pitching a series of proposals for the contest. We figured at least one would have a chance to stick – and it turned out we were right.

At Home with Placeblogs

One of the more dynamic presentations of the morning was that of Lisa Williams from H20Town, who focused on what she termed “placeblogs,” sites that she said are about the “lived experience of a place” as opposed to the “news” of the place. Williams argues that although their growth is little recognized, placeblogs are exploding – 648 at last count. As a matter of fact, she showed the group a mockup of a new directory of placeblog sites called Placeblogger.com, which will include headlines from each.

A Question of Training

Two founders of hyperlocal start-ups, in their talks in the first session at the Citizens Media Summit, both emphasized the importance and need for training of citizen journalists.

The Challenge of Scale

One of the issues I hope to see addressed at today’s summit (and which we explicitly organized the ONA Developing New Voices panel to tackle) is the question of how citizen media works at different geographic scales – national, regional, local and hyperlocal.

Onsite at the J-Lab/ONA Citizens Media Summit II

J-Lab’s great citizen journalism summit is soon to be underway here in Washington, D.C., and I’ll be in attendance and helping moderate through the day. I’m glad to say that this year’s program has the support of the Online News Association ...

How Citizen Journalism Could Save News Pros' Jobs

On Thursday I'm giving a brief talk to the Ted Scripps Fellows at the University of Colorado's Center for Environmental Journalism. My topic may sound counterintuitive to many in the news business, but I think these bright folks will hear me out.

I think citizen and community journalism (projects which involve people from outside the news business in the journalistic process) are crucial to the the long-term viability of news professionals and organizations.

Bottom Line: If you want to keep your journalism career or news organization alive in coming years, it's time to start learning the ropes of a more open approach to news.

Here's what I mean...

BlogHer: Citizen Journalism Panel (audio)

For your listening pleasure, here is the audio from the BlogHer session on citizen journalism (or whatever you want to call it) entitled: "Suffragette Journalists: Op-Ed Pages of Our Own."

LISTEN NOW! Right-click (Mac: Click-and-hold) to download the MP3 audio file. It's about 10.8 MB and runs just over 45 min long.

More about this session...

CitJ on KGNU tomorrow

Tomorrow evening, at approximately 9:30 pm MDT, community radio station KGNU (Boulder, CO) will air an episode of The Western Front featuring a segment on citizen journalism. Host Joe King interviewed me earlier today for this segment, and I think it went very well.

LISTEN NOW to a sneak preview! (Right-click or click and hold to download that MP3 audio clip directly. It's 396 KB and runs just under two minutes.)

If that clip intrigues you, here's how you can catch the whole show...