NCMR: Ideas From Smart People
by Brian Reich | 8 Jun 2008, 2:00am
The panel about organizing the social web at the National Conference For Media Reform, I presume, was designed to deliver guidance about how to mobilize the millions of citizens who are online around a larger cause, or at very least a series of smaller causes with some focus and measurable impact. It did not. The luminaries on the panel didn’t seem to want to take responsibility for directing action on that level. They seemed almost embarrassed that they were being put up as models of how to act. I wasn’t expecting that.
(Disclosure: Free Press, the organization sponsoring the National Conference For Media Reform, is a client.)
Even though they didn’t really offer any thought on the subject of the panel, the smart people who were invited to speak did offer some interesting ideas and projects to follow. They did so in the context of two important questions. Here they are:
1) Name a specific example of real social change that has happened as a result of these social technologies. The answers included:
- Raising money for women in Darfur
- One Voice movement in Palestine
- The Obama Campaign
- The work of the Sunlight Foundation (and Change Congress)
- Opposition to Sinclair Media keeping an anti-Kerry documentary from airing in 2004
- Save the Internet
I’m not sure any of those have achieved any significant social change yet (in fact when I twittered about the reference to Save The Internet a friend wrote back “What, did they achieve Net Neutrality when I wasn’t looking?” A fair point). Still, these are the closest thing we have, I think, to examples of how to get past boasting about a big email list or millions of signatures on a petition that doesn’t impact anything.
What’s missing? Well, Craig Newmark noted that “The community we are talking about is pretty small. We have to break out of the echo chamber, reach thousands and millions more people” if we really want to have an impact.
2) What is the next big thing, the technology that will change things forever? The answers included:
- Schmap.com (a widget that automatically updates statewide polls and similar)
- The IamProgressive widget on Facebook
- Twitter (not super new, but a good model for immediacy and one-to-many communications)
- SecondLife (again, not new, but the overall metaverse and opportunity to use virtual worlds to learn, teach, engage and similar)
- MagicActsofKindness.com (a social action effort promoted by the Harry Potter Alliance)
- And, a really cool project to promote the summer tour for the band, Harry and the Potters. Its called “Unlimited Enthusiasm” and used all sorts of online and offline techniques, in unison, to deliver interesting information
That’s it, that’s all I got out of the panel. But that’s a pretty interesting list, and some new projects and ideas to follow. So, I’ll take it.
NCMR: The Future of Journalism
by Brian Reich | 8 Jun 2008, 2:00am
Every panel about citizen journalism that I have ever attended (and there have been quite a few) has followed the same script. The assembled experts talk about how journalism isn’t doing its job, provide a few powerful examples of citizens sharing information at a local level that no media organization can (or will) offer, and posits that the future of journalism will feature more input from the bottom-up. They say the news consumer is becoming the news creator - that the lines are becoming blurred. They explain how the model has shifted from create and distribute to create and make available (so the audience can come and get it). They say that the new model turns journalism on its head - everything is experience and public driven instead of expert and editor driven.
It’s a good script, and the examples are all helpful. The experts know their stuff and those of us listening learn a lot from being in the audience. Every time I attend one of these panels, and today was no different, I walk away with a new list of links and projects to follow, talk about, and learn from.
So why do I still have so many questions? No panel that I have attended, including the one today at the National Conference For Media Reform, has ever moved away from this script. They haven’t given a satisfactory set of answers to the questions that I have, and that I believe many share.
(Disclosure: Free Press, the organization hosting the National Conference For Media Reform, is a client.)
So, what are my questions? What haven’t the citizen journalism experts been able to answer?
- How do you make money? I know this is everyone’s question, but what I don’t understand is if the content is good, why won’t people pay for it? I think they will — but why hasn’t anyone proven it yet?
- If you can’t make money, is there still a value in doing citizen journalism? I say yes. Journalism is supposed to be a civic good, so it should have value in our society no matter how much money is generated as a result. Projects like those the Sunlight Foundation, which has tapped citizens to help research and complete ‘reporting’, are organizing get at this point. Do they have a long-term aim besides simply contributing to the public good and the strength of our democracy?
- Who qualifies as a citizen journalist? So much of what we talk about are citizen journalism projects that exist on the web. Like social networking, didn’t citizen journalism exist long before the web made it sexy?
- Where is the line between true citizen journalism and the increasing use of citizen sources by the traditional, mainstream media? It seems to me like the goal of citizen journalism is, or should be, to improve the functioning of journalism - not to replace it. And yet, so many of the projects that we focus on focus on more than filling the gaps left by media (at the community level for example) but replacing the broken media wholesale.
- Can you teach citizen journalism the same way you teach traditional journalism? And should we? Columbia University has an award-winning journalism school. Will we see a similar organization form to grant citizens formal credentials allowing them to become journalists? Will there be any regulation of citizen journalism (besides that offered by the community?
I’m not sure these are good questions, but they keep popping into my head. I have others as well. And I know I am not the only one who still has questions. So how do we get those questions answered? Does anyone have the answers?
Like I said, there were lots of interesting points and examples in the panel discussion. And I am further committed to the cause of citizen journalism and can only hope to have the privilege of working with those who were sitting on the panel today. I feel as if I practice it every day - when I blog, when I pass along information to reporters I know about events I attend, and in lots of other ways. But I don’t think I am a journalist. So, those questions remain unanswered, along with so many others. And they will, I guess, until the next panel, and perhaps for longer than that.
