I, Reporter

Glimpse the Citizen Media of Tomorrow

The Knight Foundation, the funder behind the I, Reporter Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project, today launched a new web site that provides a fascinating window into the citizen media innovation. The group blog is called MediaShift Idea Lab, and the idea is to allow the folks behind each of the Knight Challenge Grant winners to explore the progress of their innovative Internet projects with each other and in the public eye.

As the blog editor Mark Glaser puts it, "Idea Lab will be a place where you can read about what innovators are doing to help reinvent community news. The dozens of authors at this new group blog -- hosted by PBS.org and funded by the Knight Foundation -- have received grants from Knight in their 21st Century News Challenge, and are going to report first-hand on the status of their projects."

Check out our first entries on Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker-- a blog post about our initial progress with the project, and another about some lessons learned.

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.”

'NewsHour' on New Media

The NewsHour had an interesting segment (mp3) last night on media trends, with some discussion of citizen journalism toward the end of the segment.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia J-School, who's been embroiled in debate over the value of citizen media following his New Yorker essay on the topic last summer (see Rebecca McKinnon's blog posting for reaction to his piece), had this to say on the PBS program: "There's nothing wrong with citizen journalism at all and a lot of it is a healthy development. ... However, what I haven't seen citizen journalism do yet is really provide an ongoing, regular report that monitors the activities of government and business and so on. It's a kind wonderful add-on and corrective to flaws in the conversation, but it doesn't conduct the conversation, and that's the value of traditional media."

But just to cite one example, wouldn't the Sunlight Foundation projects on earmarks and congressional family business be exactly the kind of ongoing, regular report he says is missing? And aren't the many hyperlocal citJ sites that are covering what no local or regional news organization is covering an example of conducting the conversation?"

-- A. Adam Glenn

Beyond Shovelware

Today and tomorrow, Adam Glenn and I are at the annual conference of the New York Publishers Association -- an organization for community newspapers in the state of NY. All day tomorrow we're hosting a "web site clinic," where newspaper publishers and staff can sit down with us for a free half-hour consultation about their web site.

Here's one of the handouts we're offering:

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BEYOND SHOVELWARE

A strong online presence can enhance your bottom line, as well as the quality of your news, features, and commentary. Why not actively leverage the web to build productive, positive mutual relationships with your readers?

The key to success is to view your site as a vital complement to your print publication -- not a mere sideline or echo. Then, consider how to make your site findable, usable, and interactive.

Currently, most community news sites are little more than “shovelware” (straightforward, unenhanced online republication of print-edition stories). While shovelware is better than having no online presence at all, it’s generally not very engaging.

Here are six examples of creative approaches that could be applied to improve any community news site...

Could Citizen Journalists Have Saved These Lives?

I couldn't help but think about citizen journalists' potential role as tipsters, after hearing a fascinating talk over at Columbia Journalism School by David Barstow, the NY Times investigative reporter, about his 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on workplace safety at McWane Industries, a iron pipe maker labeled by the paper as one of the most dangerous employers in America.

One thing that jumped out at me in the remarkable discussion on how the series came about, and the varied and impressive range of techniques Barstow used to report it, was this –- despite the company’s deliberate indifference to worker safety, Barstow said no local papers near various McWane plants had ever touched the larger story. The weak quality of the local news organizations, Barstow argued, was further hampered by a mentality that left beyond question anything that seemed to contribute to the local economy.

Is it possible citizen journalism could have made a difference in this case?

Citizen & Mainstream Journalists: Better Together?

(UPDATE JAN 16: Via Poynter's E-Media Tidbits weblog, journalist Miranda Spencer offered some good examples of the kind of collaboration I'm discussion in this article. See: "Miranda Spencer: Pro/Citizen Journalism Collaboration Works.")

Adam and I have been considering this for a while: Why not find ways to put citizen journalists' energy to good use creating popular but resource-intensive types of content that papers love to run but can rarely afford staff time for? Stuff like long-form, in-depth, narrative journalism, for instance,

This week, the popular Denver-area free weekly paper Westword ran a poignant column about the value of long-form narrative journalism. See "The dailies are looking for characters," by Michael Roberts. Here's what intrigued me about that piece...
 

"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...

'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...