TOPIC 2: NEW MEDIA

Text 1. Citizen Journalism – Social Media Today

What is citizen journalism? Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic", or "street journalism") is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and distributing news and information," according to the 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intention of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate and relevant information that a democracy requires."

Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which is practiced by professional journalists. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media.

Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006: Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006: The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global Internet to create, increase or fact-check media on their own or working together with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mass media and point out factual errors (=mistakes) or bias (=a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment; prejudice; to be biased against sb) on your blog. Or you might take a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.

Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a home-movie camera, is sometimes presented as the first of all citizen journalists.

Since the Internet became a part of everyday life in the middle 1990s, it has played an increasingly large role in the delivery of news about the world to citizens. Instead of reading one or two daily newspapers and watching a news show on TV, most citizens today get their news from a far greater range of sources including many web sites that offer journalism in many forms. Web sites offering mainly opinion and commentary, such as “blogs” written by one person, became and remain popular. However, such blogs are often limited because they are not reports on the world – i.e., people and events seen with fresh eyes – but rather are interpretations of previously reported events according to the writers’ pre-established prejudices, and political beliefs. Today, a new form of Internet journalism – citizen journalism – is taking root in which ordinary citizens are learning how to report on the people and events of the world with fresh eyes.

Public Journalism is now bringing facts to the reader via new media such as the use of mobile phones. Mobile phones have the potential to transform reporting and place the power of reporting in the hands of the public. One small organization providing mobile news and exploring public journalism is Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.

According to Mark Glaser, during 9/11 many eyewitness accounts of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center came from citizen journalists. Images and stories from citizen journalists close to the World Trade Center offered content that played a major role in the story.

In 2004, when the 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia, news footage from many people who experienced the tsunami was widely broadcast. During the 2009 Iranian election protests the microblog service Twitter played an important role, after foreign journalists had effectively been "barred from reporting".

What is the goal of citizen journalism? Citizen journalists offer different personal reasons for learning how to write in a journalistic format for publication on the Internet and elsewhere. But a common reason is dissatisfaction, often quite strong and deep, with the news media which in recent years has distanced itself from the concerns of ordinary citizens. Instead, the media seems to many to have become an advertising-and-propaganda machine either pushing commercial products, or distributing political messages designed to manipulate citizens to shyly follow elected officials in a certain way. A common goal of citizen journalists is to bring back journalism as a truly democratic practice that directly serves the real lives and interests of citizens.

Who are citizen journalists? Trained journalists usually follow an ethical code of “objectivity,” which means that besides making an effort to be factual and fair, they also try to remain personally neutral towards the subjects they write about. Citizen journalists, while they also make an effort to be factual and fair, are not usually neutral on the subjects they write about, and they don’t try to be. They believe instead that the best journalism: A) is a form of popular writing; B) presents news and public issues with an objective point of view; C) achieves fairness to the facts, to sources, and to readers by fully explaining that point of view while also offering views, ideas, and perspectives other than its own. Decide exactly what you want to write: You have a general idea already, most likely, but it’s a good idea to review specifically what you want to write about. Maybe it’s a public issue such as drinking water safety, the condition of local roads, a small number of parks and playgrounds, etc. Possibly you are already deeply engaged in social service of some kind such as children’s rights, animal welfare, or elderly issues. If that’s so you probably feel the news media doesn’t cover this set of issues well, and you want to do it yourself. You may be planning to cover an event of some kind such as a political speech, a government meeting, a demonstration or rally. Or you may want to write an article about a specific person, such as someone you admire, an elected official, a person in the news, etc. Whatever your subject, try to describe the focus of your article in just a sentence or two: “I want to write an article about the sub-standard housing conditions for the migrant laborers who live in my community every summer.” Next, ask yourself: “Who do I want to read this article?” Be as specific as possible: “The citizens of Mapleville. The city council, the mayor, and every city officials. The management of the Peppy Foods vegetable packing plant that employs the migrant workers – not only at the Mapleville plant but also people who hold the most important positions at the company’s headquarters in Marion, NY. I also want every state senator and representative to read this piece, and the migrants as well.” Finally, collect as many e-mails as you can of the people you want to read your story. Because once you’ve written it, you’ll send it to them!

Criticisms: Citizen journalists may be activists within the communities they write about. This has drawn some criticism from traditional media institutions such as The New York Times, which have accused supporters of public journalism of abandoning the traditional goal of 'objectivity'. Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the ethics involved in reporting news.

An article in 2005 by Tom Grubisich reviewed ten new citizen journalism sites and found many of them lacking in quality and content. David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter and writer/producer of the popular TV series, "The Wire," criticized the concept of citizen journalism—claiming that unpaid bloggers who write as a hobby cannot replace trained, professional, seasoned journalists.

An editorial published by The Digital Journalist web magazine expressed a similar position, suggesting banning the term "citizen journalist", and replacing it with "citizen news gatherer". "Professional journalists cover fires, floods, crime, the legislature and the White House every day. There is either a fire line or police line, or security, or the Secret Service who allow them to pass upon displaying credentials checked by the departments or agencies concerned. A citizen journalist, an amateur, will always be on the outside of those lines. Imagine the White House throwing open its gates to admit everybody with a camera phone to a presidential event."

Text 2. Citizen Journalism by Steve Klabnik 22 Oct 2009

http://steveklabnik.github.com/2009/10/22/citizen-journalism.html

Many of you follow me on Twitter, and if you do, you have undoubtedly noticed that I’ve developed a bit of a new hobby. I’ve felt more and more that citizen journalism is both real and important, and so I’d like to show you my thoughts on the topic.

I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t even think about the G20 (The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies and to discuss key issues in the global economy) until a few weeks before it came to Pittsburgh. I’ve grown quite indifferent with politics over the last few years. I don’t have faith in the government, basically. I’m not sure we’re really “by the people, for the people” anymore. So why would such a government listen, especially to those that want it to go away?

What I did know was that this was an event of international significance. I felt that if something this big and important was happening where I live, I wouldn’t be living up to my duty as a citizen. So, I decided to observe as much as possible.

As I walked around Downtown early in the morning on Thursday, I felt the need to share. I sent out some messages to Twitter about what I was doing and what I’d seen, and it felt very natural. I basically just tweeted nonstop. I was listening to other people’s messages, and informing those around me.

I’m incredibly motivated to see other people find what I do useful. Other people use the code I’ve written, and it saves them time and effort. So this kind of feedback makes me really excited. While tweeting what I saw, people who weren’t there found my information useful, and by telling others what I was hearing on Twitter, they found my information useful. I sent out about 9,000 tweets for the duration of the G20.

The Media has failed: Then came the media coverage after the fact. The national media didn’t pay any attention to what was happening. The local media put up a few stories, but there’s no ‘journalism’ in what they did. They reported. There’s a difference. A free press is one of the cornerstones (=sth that is extremely important) of democracy. In order for it to work, it has to be a truly free press. The press is supposed to keep the government in check at all times. They’re supposed to be watching out for us.

The reason this is so important is that too much goes on in the world for one person to digest. If you think world events as one big giant stream, we ask the media to filter out what’s important to us, and only bring us as much news as we can handle. Even if you tried to just pay attention to Pittsburgh news, you couldn’t follow it all.

Old Media used to be that filter. They would make sure to let us know when things were wrong. They’d let the banal, everyday things slip by, and just give us the juicy stuff. Journalists used to actually do investigation! They’d find information from multiple sources, put the pieces together, and present it to us. All too often, what passes for journalism today is some reporter on location at the local high school graduation, saying a few brief things.

This is why Old Media is dying: This is why young people don’t trust the media. I will never watch the local news again in my life. I will never subscribe to a newspaper. They’re no longer a good filter.

What I will do is create my own custom filtering system. I’ll subscribe to 1,000 blogs, then only skim headlines and dig deeper where necessary. I’ll see the news that I care about, filtered in a way that makes sense to me. Newspapers never talk about things that I want to hear about. Their business model is old and outdated. It’s not as efficient as the new way of doing things.

New Media COULD be better: I won’t make the wide claim that blogs are always of a high quality. I won’t make the claim that they are 100% accurate. But what people forget is this: neither is the Old Media. But what I can tell you is this:

We can give you news faster than they can. Here’s the thing: as of right now, if you follow my twitter, you can get news in real time. You can get news as it happens, before anyone else. There is a drawback: you won’t get all of your news. You’ll get the news that I care about.

See, the thing is, any paper in town could get a Twitter. In fact, they have them. But they’ll never be able to capture the same amount of news as we all will, by working together. See, they can employ a few people to work full-time, but that doesn’t compare to the legion of people taking 5 minutes out of their day to report on what’s going on in their neck of the woods. And it doesn’t even take everyone… just a few. Just enough.

I could write a ton about how decentralized systems are better than centralized ones. So that’s the deal, Old Media. We’re all kicking you out. Thanks for the good times, but we’re better at your job than you are. It’s just a matter of time.