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.

Searching for CitMedia – Start Here!

So where are all these citizen journalists? We can help you find them.

One of I,Reporter’s biggest and most exciting projects in recent months has been our ongoing work for the newly launched Knight Citizen News Network website, KCNN.org. The task set for us by Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab at the University of Maryland, was to build a searchable database of hundreds of sites around the country that offer citizen journalism. 

'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

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.

Conversational Journalism

I just read an intriguing interview with Ray Hacke, Citizen Journalism Editor at the Bakersfield Californian -- an established print daily newspaper that has apparently made a strong commitment to fostering and showcasing citizen journalism.

SEE: "Narrative Journalism, CitJ and The Bakersfield Californian" (in Journalism Hope by K. Paul Mallasch, Jan. 31)

This excerpt, which opened the interview, caught my interest:

Journalism Hope: I like the fact you used the term "contributing writer." Did you consciously stay away from the "citizen journalist" term? If so, why?

Ray Hacke: Actually, we did choose to stay away from the term "citizen journalism." The reason was that we wanted average readers -- people who have little to no writing experience whatsoever -- to feel like they could have a voice in our paper, too.

The word "journalist" has some heavy connotations to it. We felt people might hear it and think they'd have to have some formal training or be thoroughly knowledgeable about grammar, spelling, style, etc., to write for us. We figured that might scare them off, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Our overriding mantra for citizen journalism is, "Journalism is a conversation," and we want people from all walks of life to sit down at the table and join in. So far, we've actually been pretty successful in that regard. We've gotten contributions from writers as young as 12 and as old as 90, from janitors as well as doctors.

That exchange really got my gears going on a whole lot of levels -- especially the concept of conversational journalism...

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?

CitJ: Is It Better to Start Small?

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a colleague about the apparent demise of Bayosphere, the ambitious Bay Area citizen journalism venture launched to great fanfare in May 2005.

I mentioned to my colleague that I think Bayosphere may have tried to start too big. It seems to me that citizen journalism generally has a better chance of thriving when it starts small -- either by focusing on specific neighborhoods or towns (not amorphous regions), or by choosing rather narrowly-defined topics, or by cultivating close relationships with a small core group of contributors.

It's more like growing a garden than building a factory...

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...