Friday, August 03, 2007
The future of papers: citizen journalism?
It seems like every day, there is doom and gloom coming out of the American papers about American papers.
The San Francisco Chronicle is laying off one out of four reporters and editors including people whose work I read and respected back when I was in college. One person posts on a Bay Area blog, "Sure, (and) why not cut the Chronicle staff to 200? It's just as easy to not buy a newspaper put out by 200 as it is to not buy one produced by 400." A memo from another California paper is just sad to read.
Even a couple of local papers including the local daily announced they were shutting down their customer service call centers; so local folks will be calling an outside company with at least some of its call centers in the Philippines.
In this environment, I was intrigued by a news item that says $20 million in private cash is being invested in journalism. And no, I don't mean the Wall Street Journal. The item has to do with what's called 'citizen journalism.' You'll see the national blog lists three efforts, NowPublic, Associated Content, and OhMyNews.
Citizen journalism is essentially journalism posted by citizens. One version, of course, is our very own homegrown Suburban Times.
The advantage of this approach is that citizens can cut out the middleman and post news themselves. Another advantage is that in theory, no news is too 'small;' you could post news about a club meeting, about a neighborhood event, or something else that could not reasonably make the pages of a big newspaper. A final advantage is that unlike in traditional journalism, people can comment immediately on a story that has been posted. If something in the story is inaccurate, someone can correct it. If there is debate about whether something is inaccurate or not, people can have that discussion then and there.
The huge disadvantage, of course, is that you don't know how much, if any, of the content is accurate or what agendas are being promoted. At one of the sites mentioned, I saw a story posted claiming that one of the presidential candidates was stripping. In another news story, someone states as a fact that Hillary Clinton is running for an office called Goddess Empress. Obviously, these national sites have a long ways to go in terms of credibility and breadth. I have much more confidence in The Suburban Times, where a local owner keeps a close eye on the contents.
I'd be interested in what you think about them and especially the potential they represent. I was mostly looking for local content, and of course local citizen journalism is in its infancy. You can get a sense of that by looking at Associated Content's local content.
OhMyNews struck me as focused internationally, which of course is fine when that's your main interest. There's a thought-provoking column about citizen journalism by well-known journalist Dan Gillmor.
All this said, you will find a very clever and skeptical response to citizen journalism at the National Journal. The author says in good humor, but with a point, that if you judge journalism by what citizens produce, all we care about is traffic. Author William Powers concludes by saying, "Crowds aren't wise all by themselves -- they need editing, too."
One thing I will say for NowPublic is that somehow their web page went through my computer and thought I might be interested in news about Tacoma. That was actually a bit creepy. I'd be interested in knowing what happens when you click on their local pages. The local offerings are definitely a little uneven; but it will be fascinating to watch how sites like this grow.
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The San Francisco Chronicle is laying off one out of four reporters and editors including people whose work I read and respected back when I was in college. One person posts on a Bay Area blog, "Sure, (and) why not cut the Chronicle staff to 200? It's just as easy to not buy a newspaper put out by 200 as it is to not buy one produced by 400." A memo from another California paper is just sad to read.
Even a couple of local papers including the local daily announced they were shutting down their customer service call centers; so local folks will be calling an outside company with at least some of its call centers in the Philippines.
In this environment, I was intrigued by a news item that says $20 million in private cash is being invested in journalism. And no, I don't mean the Wall Street Journal. The item has to do with what's called 'citizen journalism.' You'll see the national blog lists three efforts, NowPublic, Associated Content, and OhMyNews.
Citizen journalism is essentially journalism posted by citizens. One version, of course, is our very own homegrown Suburban Times.
The advantage of this approach is that citizens can cut out the middleman and post news themselves. Another advantage is that in theory, no news is too 'small;' you could post news about a club meeting, about a neighborhood event, or something else that could not reasonably make the pages of a big newspaper. A final advantage is that unlike in traditional journalism, people can comment immediately on a story that has been posted. If something in the story is inaccurate, someone can correct it. If there is debate about whether something is inaccurate or not, people can have that discussion then and there.
The huge disadvantage, of course, is that you don't know how much, if any, of the content is accurate or what agendas are being promoted. At one of the sites mentioned, I saw a story posted claiming that one of the presidential candidates was stripping. In another news story, someone states as a fact that Hillary Clinton is running for an office called Goddess Empress. Obviously, these national sites have a long ways to go in terms of credibility and breadth. I have much more confidence in The Suburban Times, where a local owner keeps a close eye on the contents.
I'd be interested in what you think about them and especially the potential they represent. I was mostly looking for local content, and of course local citizen journalism is in its infancy. You can get a sense of that by looking at Associated Content's local content.
OhMyNews struck me as focused internationally, which of course is fine when that's your main interest. There's a thought-provoking column about citizen journalism by well-known journalist Dan Gillmor.
All this said, you will find a very clever and skeptical response to citizen journalism at the National Journal. The author says in good humor, but with a point, that if you judge journalism by what citizens produce, all we care about is traffic. Author William Powers concludes by saying, "Crowds aren't wise all by themselves -- they need editing, too."
One thing I will say for NowPublic is that somehow their web page went through my computer and thought I might be interested in news about Tacoma. That was actually a bit creepy. I'd be interested in knowing what happens when you click on their local pages. The local offerings are definitely a little uneven; but it will be fascinating to watch how sites like this grow.
