The man who founded one of the first user-submitted newspapers says the future of citizen journalism might require - of all people - journalists.
Michael Maier is the founder and CEO of Blogform Publishing and wrote "Journalism without Journalists: Vision or Caricature?" as part of the his Harvard fellowship (found via CyberJournalist). In it, Maier criticizes Dan Gilmor's failed "Bayosphere" project, which attempted to use readers to report on the San Francisco Bay area.
Many contributions were well-intended, but failed to meet a basic requirement of good journalism—that authors write about things readers care about and in a way that readers find compelling. (It did, after all, take well over one hundred years to develop a toolbox for good journalism.) One further reason, though, seems to have been a lack of collaboration between the amateurs and the professionals. After the project faded, some contributors complained about their feelings of being left alone during their “work.” Inevitably, the citizens felt unappreciated by the professional journalists.I had a similar experience with Readers Edition. Sometimes, when a very long, self-loving text about some bizarre topic arrived, I considered renaming the paper Writer’s Edition. People write what they like. They write about “things they care about, in their own voice and in the formats they think are best fit for them,” as German media-scientist Stefan Büffel puts it. Readers who write hardly think about other readers. They are driven by self-realization.
The next level of user-generated content, I've said, will be a collaboration between trained editors and amateur writers. This cooperation is needed not only to improve the content, but also because the writers demand it. If you want a user-generated publication to be popular, then actively find people who have something to say to the world that is of journalistic value and help them say it.
Comments (3)
"Because writers demand it" is a little odd, but it's refreshing to hear a blow struck for training, ability, etc. "I'm a reporter" should mean something beyond I've got a camera and an opinion." Let's bring in the person on the street but let's not assume said person automatically knows more than we do about how and what to report.
Posted by matt king | January 5, 2008 11:01 AM
Posted on January 5, 2008 11:01
I'm a little puzzled at the characterization of Bayosphere in the paper and here.
While I would agree that Dan Gillmor 'set out' to harness the power of citizen journalists and pro-am reporting, it never became apparent that Bayosphere was actually an attempt to do that.
It was essentially just a series of unfocused blogs and forums, and as is accurately portrayed in the paper, it didn't come close to serving Dan's goals.
Anyway, it's just a bad example, because no one really *tried* to make it a journalistic enterprise. There was no professional guide or call for participation in specific networks or requests for simple data, there was just Dan's blog.
Backfence and YourHub are obviously stronger examples of *attempts* at something nebulous which some folks might call Citizen Journalism.
But I think we now know the strength of Gillmor's 'My readers know more than I do' mantra has nothing to do with giving readers an open platform to publish what they know; the whole idea is that readers have the answers to questions that come up when a reporter is working an a story, and that groups of readers often know what the *real* story is, while a reporter is led down a different path by his or her sources.
Actually, the more I look at that paper, the more disappointed I am. There's no mention of Backfence, YourHub, or Pegasus, while spending a great deal of time on the LA Times wikitorial.
And I've just written a long, rambling, relatively petty blog comment, but so be it. I think it's a crappy paper, and needs a little networked Fisking.
Posted by Ryan Sholin | January 5, 2008 12:05 PM
Posted on January 5, 2008 12:05
Ryan is correct that people have answers to questions. The questions are what's important, and should be decided by someone interested in performing journalism. This willy-nilly atmosphere of let's post/print anything the public sends isn't as productive as focusing the content and actively soliciting good responses.
When I say the writers "demand" help writing their stories, I meant to use the word in the sense that there is "market demand" for something. In other words, this help wouldn't be forced upon the public.
Posted by Lucas | January 5, 2008 12:28 PM
Posted on January 5, 2008 12:28