In next week's class, April 28, we're going to spend some time talking a little more about writing, blogs and the idea of "citizen journalism." During tonight's class, I'd like you to do two things.
First, read over these two articles about the concept:
From PBS: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_ci.html
From Poynter: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=91391
Second, spend some time exploring different citizen journalism sites. A citizen journalist site and a blog are not necessarily the same thing, though they can be. After you've looked through, read and scanned some different sites, find one that moves you in a particular way -- either strongly for, or strongly against, what the site is doing. Post your response and ideas by the end of class. Next week, we'll discuss. Your response should be between 250-300 words (about the length of Jenn's previous project critique)
Some pages that offer links to different citizen journalism sites:
http://www.kcnn.org/citmedia_sites/
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002226.php
4.21.2008
April 21: on citizen journalism
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I am not a big reader of “community journalism” websites. I get most of my news from standard media sites like CNN.com. However, after reading over some of these community journalism websites, I can see that they have some legitimacy, especially locally.
One website that struck my eye was "The Somerville News." It’s a community website about the city of Somerville, Mass. My father grew up in Somerville and I spent a good amount of my childhood in the city, so I’m pretty familiar with what the site is talking about. The website is updated a couple of times a day with articles and columns about Somerville. It is obvious that the site is popular because some stories have dozens of user comments. Some of the articles are news-related. One of the most commented articles was entitled “Lawyer gets probation for fatal crash.” The article wasn’t taken from a major newspaper outlet like The Boston Globe. It was an original article written by one of the site’s editors. Another popular article was “From homeless to Harvard.” The article, also original, was a feature piece on a Liberian woman who lived in the city, became homeless, and will attend Harvard in the fall. It reads like a feature article in a newspaper.
In the future, as these types of websites become more common, I will become more interested in them. To be honest, I’m not at an age where this type of news is important to me. As I get older and settle down in an area, I will be more attracted to the goings-on in my community. These types of websites will only get more popular, and that’s a good thing.
The site I found is: http://denver.yourhub.com/AuroraNorth
It is a citizen journalism page, where anyone can post an article. It is designed similar to a professional news website, but the top clearly gives anyone an opportunity to post what they want. First, I will say that it is well designed and professional looking. It is informative about the area it is covering (Aurora, Colorado) and even posts events and activities that are going on around the area. It makes me think, yes, they may be normal people with no journalism degree, but they could also be seen as a new web news site where people turn to for real news. Just because it does not have the prestige of The Washington Post, does that mean that it is not reliable?
The more forceful side of me thinks, no, it is not a reliable news source. I worked hard for my journalism degree, and for anyone with a camera and an opinion to be able to say that they are any kind of journalist is a discredit to the career. If give CPR to a choking person am I a doctor? If I pour water on something that is burning am I a firefighter? If I sound out a word for a child struggling with a book, am I a teacher? The obvious answer is no. The simple fact is that SOMEONE is always at the right place at the right time with the right equipment, so we have accidental journalist, such as the guy who had the video of the Virginia Tech shooting. Call him a journalistic hero, but not a citizen journalist.
I read blogs as part of my internship and have decided on two things. One, blogs are the product of people finally having the means to do what they love to do: talk about themselves. Two, people like to seem as though they are smart and important. And, apparently people like to listen. Yes, there are blogs about certain topics filled with quotes (usually gotten from real news articles) and shaped just like a news article. But the bottom line is it is still your average person telling you about something they probably heard from someone else, or worse, made up. Journalists pride themselves of their reliability, timeliness, accuracy, can citizen journalists who haven't taken JOUR300 say the same thing? Call it a hobby, but certainly not any form of journalism
I know a lot of people criticize Wikipedia, but I have always found it to be a good starting point or a quick reference guide when you want to know something simple, like the date of an historical event.
I had not heard of Wikinews until I read it about it in one of the articles (I think the second one from Poynter). When did it come out? I must have slept on it somehow. Or maybe I had heard about it a long time ago and the memory slipped away. Either way I think it’s a great idea.
People can say it runs the risk of being inaccurate, and they’d be right, but there’s something about news that lists its sources at the bottom (when they’re documents or other news stories) that is quite useful. I never feel like I have a clear picture of an event unless I read about it from several angles, which often takes a lot of time. Wikinews can help a reader like me save time. The great thing about it listing the sources is that even if the article is flawed, which it likely will be in some way, it is easy to consult the sources that went into writing it and see where it went wrong. If there are no sources listed, then you know from the beginning that it isn’t very credible.
What I find especially interesting is that because it is an example of “citizens’ journalism” you can find facts that you may not find in the Post or the NYT. It is true that accuracy is something you can expect from those “professional” sources, but what you cannot often expect is something outside the traditions of the day-to-day news cycle. You might not get a story told from the perspective of a homeless person or a anarchist or any other demographic not likely to appear in the pages of the Post or the NYT. Wikinews has a lot of potential. What if, for example, it ran a story about the building of the Nationals stadium and linked to a blog entry from a displaced resident, a homeless person, a baseball fan and a developer? It could provide a wide range of viewpoints and break the continuity of newsspeak. Just a thought.
I think "citizen journalism" does have a purpose in today's society, especially in looking at local events and news. The fact is that professional journalists in mass media markets will be incapable of covering every event that might be relevant to a person in a smaller area. These citizen journalists can do just that.
In looking through some of the sites listed, one that caught my eye was the Silver Spring, Singular. I thought it took a good look at what was going on inside of Silver Spring, covering things that would appear in regular media outlets, such as the question and answer with the owner of the Fillmore which is being established in Silver Spring. However, it also covers events that could be important and interesting to the residents that would never show up in the mainstream media, such as the Jerry’s Subs and Pizza closing. What may seem irrelevant to a large media journalist could be very important to the citizens of the area that the blog covers. Also, this site in particular does a very good job of mixing straight news with features and opinion posts.
As the poynter article said, there is no way that this will ever replace “big media”. The fact that it isn’t necessarily a reliable or “professional” source will ensure of that. However, as a supplemental tool used to report on local events, or events that you have some personal knowledge on, it can be a very useful tool and continue to grow.
I've become a big fan of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi and transgender) blogs because they serve such a vital role for a minority community that lacks significant representation in the mainstream media. InterstateQ.com is one such effort in the state of North Carolina. It provides "a granular, ground-level view" on larger stories, as Rick Edmonds said of community blogs on the Poynter Institute Web site. For example, an April 15 post on the blog needles a North Carolina congressman for his brazen promises to rich supporters by linking to a JPG image of his campaign literature. On the image, viewers can see for themselves how a donor of $2300 enjoys many perks, including admission to the "Annual 'McHenry Christmas Party.'" The details are salacious and important to a community of readers who dislike the politician for his opposition to their rights.
Another important aspect of InterstateQ is that it gives voice to young people who might not have such a platform in traditional media. Three of its four contributors are my age or younger, fresh out of college. These people are part of a long tradition of young entrepreneurs in new media. As Carl Stepp, my former Journalism History professor, likes to say, the average age of people driving new media is 23.
Viewers of InterstateQ also have the opportunity to read news and opinion that they can get nowhere else. On the local and state levels, LGBT newspapers are the only other outlet for such information; and a limited amount of information can fit in a weekly or monthly community publication. It is hard to emphasize the importance of this point. As someone who scours the Washington Blade for news and wishes it could cover more, it is such a relief to find LGBT blogs to pick up the slack.
One blog site that I liked was http://rethinkcollegepark.net/blog/.This site provided a great deal of information about various issues that concern the College Park area. It seemed to provide a basic summary of an issue and then supported it with links to stories done by “typical journalist” about the topic. The blog also provided a lot of factual information, like graphs, photos, and statistics that helped illustrate or support certain topics. I think blogs like this are a great tool for communities because it doesn’t just come off as a public forum for people to just rant and rave. It provides useful information that can be used to keep residents up-to-date on matters that may affect them.
In general, I am not a big fan of the “citizen journalism” concept. I believe it gives people a perfect opportunity to voice their own beliefs and opinions while spreading misinformation. I think it also takes away from the credibility of the journalism field because it allows anyone to be considered a “journalist”. It is my belief that there is a lot of hard work and in-depth reporting that goes into being a journalist. Journalist must fact-check and try to get as much unbiased information as possible, if they don’t they suffer public scrutiny. “Citizen Journalist” aren’t held to these same standards and therefore shouldn’t be able to report as journalist
On the other hand, I do feel that bloggers are useful when providing “community news” because bigger outlets don’t cater to just one area, so this provides people with a place to go and find information important to them and voice their opinion on it.
I certainly didn’t expect to find as many citizen sites as were listed in the example pages. As I scrolled down a couple caught my eye because they had the word Bainbridge in them. Bainbridge Island is a small community which is a 35-minute ferry ride from Seattle. I lived there for three years and know the community and citizens well. I thought this would be a good place to begin.
I thought the site http://bainbridgenotes.wordpress.com/ was great! It looked like a legitimate news source. The articles ranged from a “thank you” for planting community flowers to the fleecing of the community funds. It seemed objective and authentic.. like the author was investigating on her own. I believe this site to be a great example of citizen journalism. The author writes frequent blogs and fellow citizens write back and contribute pictures and ideas.
After reading about the community I most recently left, I thought I would focus my attention to other communities in which I have lived. The next site was based in Charleston, WV. The blog http://charleston-west-virginia-economic-dev.blogspot.com/ is dedicated to economic growth in West Virginia. The site offers tax help for the new business owner, information about the problems facing health-care retention in the state and some successful West Virginians that can offer hope to a desperate state. I loved this site and its purpose. There is a quiet uprising of the people in West Virginia to bring in business and attract dollars. This site is a responsible and informational way to contribute to that movement.
The next West Virginia site is a poor example of citizen journalism. http://www.sheck.com/serendipity/ is a site written by a citizen of Huntington, WV. She is a self proclaimed liberal democrat (at least she is upfront about her politics) that will write about anything in the community. The author had some good information on her site such as a local scammer with fake Verizon bills… but some of her sentences weren’t complete sentences and there were major grammatical errors(though this journalist isn’t immune to that disease). This limited the credibility of her and her site.
I chose to look at websites that focus on an area that I’m already familiar with, so I ended up looking at DCist, a blog that covers news, sports, arts and music related events in Washington, D.C. It is not a totally open blog, where anybody can post an article and have it posted. DCist has a staff of bloggers who write the vast majority of the content (excluding comments of course).
Most articles are relatively short, ranging from blurbs about upcoming concerts or art exhibits to multi-paragraph commentary on a piece of news that affects the district or interviews with noteworthy musicians, artists and community members. The blog caters to people who are already pretty familiar with the D.C. area and prominent issues affecting the city. It also seems directed at those who actively engage in the various range of events around the city, and those who have a sort of indie or artsy taste.
Personally, I really like DCist. It knows its audience, and knows what its audience wants to read about. It also recognizes the fact that most of its readers are people who work day jobs in the city, and probably don’t have much time to spend reading extensive articles or treatises every time they check the site. In addition, it is distinctly directed at what stuff in D.C. I want to know about. It compiles notable events throughout D.C. that may interest readers, knowing that readers also don’t have the time to go through individual concert venues or art galleries’ websites to see what’s going on.
Like Dan, I don't get my news fix from citizen blogs or sites. But I do appreciate the citizen journalism that is carefully written and reported.
The "Farm Bill" is a meticulously written breakdown of the farm bill. The lead offers subtle humor and dives right into the explanation. The article is engaging, easy to read and comprehend. The best feature of the article is that it allows for user edits. Not a suggestion box but a malleable text that can be reposted by the average "joe". It's citizen journalism like this that should be what people think of when using the terms "blog" or "online media."
Instead people think of "slit pants and bleeding ears". While there is nothing inherently wrong with this blog, it's not citizen journalism. It's a public display "enlightenment," closer to a journal entry than journalism.
Citizen journalism should be or immitate professional journalism. This article does just that. What caught me on the OhMyNews front page was the photo of the (I'm always a sucker for a good photo). But the article itself, with beautiful photos woven throughout, give the reader detailed, well digested information in a conversational tone. I had to double check to see if it was in fact a citizen who wrote the article because it definitely imitates, if it isn't, professional journalism.
I've never spent a lot of time looking at citizen journalism either. The only blogs I've ever really bothered to look at were ones of writers from major papers. Usually I feel like the blogs I find have so much information and are so unorganized that I have a tough time getting anything out of them. Personally, I prefer my standard news where I know what to expect. However, I can see the value of blogs, especially blogs by "trained" journalists. I usually feel that blogs of trained journalists offer a more candid perspective of an event or issue. Something that might not be considered newsworthy by traditional standards could fit well into a blog. My issues with blogs usually come down to the writing style. I have a hard time finding the news so to speak. However, I know that not everyone reads or retains information the way I do so I can see how an alternative media outlet like a blog could be the choice media for someone.
I looked at a blog called the Phillyist http://phillyist.com/index2.php since it’s close to my hometown. It’s intended for the Philadelphia community, and anyone can post. This is blog that I thought was a really good example of citizen journalism done well. There were a mixture of types of posts, from news articles to the equivalent of op-eds to Philadelphia photos. One post specifically talked about education of Philadelphia residents and offered tips on finding jobs, another talked about the presidential candidates recent time in Philadelphia. Some of the other posts were simply fun. One individual continued a series of posts she called Proofreading Philly. Each post was a photo that captured a different proofreading error in Philadelphia. While things like the proofreading posts or interesting photos in Philadelphia posts are simply fun, I don’t think they should be discounted as journalism. Print newspapers have always included diversions from comics to crosswords to blurbs about upcoming events. I think a local blog, especially, allows for expression of the residents to both entertain each other and keep each other informed about the issues that affect them.
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