Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group

St. Louis convention panels represent balance of teaching, research, PF&R

2011-06-09T17:21:00.002-04:00

Note: This article also appears in the Summer 2011 edition of the CCJIG newsletter

By Kirsten Johnson
CCJIG Vice Chair

This year’s conference in St. Louis features an exciting slate of programming in teaching, research, and professional freedom and responsibility. The following sessions are co-sponsored by CCJIG with other interest groups and divisions.

Wednesday 3:15 p.m.
Going Public

This panel will focus on how different journalism schools are teaching undergraduates to cover and serve local communities through citizen journalism and journalism-related service projects. (Magazine, CCJIG)

Wednesday 5:00 p.m.
Location, Location, Location:
Using Location-based Services to Add Some Mobile to Your Journalism Course

Use of location services in journalism has been on the rise recently, with the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times making inroads to attract readers with mobile applications such as Foursquare. At the same time other location services such as Yelp! have on their own generated significant content solely from users. This panel will explore how to fit location into the classroom curriculum. Best practices and specific assignments will be highlighted. (Mass Communication and Society, CCJIG)

Thursday 8:15 a.m.

Beyond the Box: Issues and
Innovations in Researching Digital Content

In exploring user participation and the works of citizen journalists, researchers commonly apply methods of content analysis, one of the most popular methods of inquiry in media research. Media scholars traditionally apply the method to analyze content in static forms such as newspapers, magazines, films, or video. The Internet has not only enabled new forms of publishing – leading to an explosion of user-generated content – but also has introduced new considerations for scholarly examinations of such content. This panel will examine methodological issues surrounding content analysis of online content. (CCJIG, Radio and Television Journalism)

Thursday 5:00 p.m.
News With a View

For decades the concept of objectivity in journalism has been disputed. With the rise of new technologies that allow more individuals to claim they produce news, and the increasing reliance of mainstream journalism on manufactured spectacle, this panel will discuss how the increasing presence of subjectivity in news is affecting the news we receive. (Community Journalism, CCJIG)

Thursday 6:45 p.m.
Membership meeting

Election of officers, a review and preview of the past year and coming one, along with networking and camaraderie.

Friday 8:15 a.m.
The Role of Citizen Journalists, Bloggers and Digital Media in the Political Campaign

This panel will discuss the use of different forms of digital media for political purposes and explore their effects on a range of important political variables. It also will address how citizen journalists and bloggers contribute to democracy and influence campaigns, and how they reconcile the notions of journalistic neutrality and ethical standards for all candidates with the passion and authenticity that readers often expect from citizen journalists and bloggers. (CCJIG, Communication Technology)

Friday 12:15 p.m.
Community News Sites: What Works (J-Lab Luncheon)

More than 7,000 placeblogs have launched around the country. Thousands more hyperlocal community news sites are now covering town and school board meetings that have never been covered before – not even in the heyday of American journalism. Building on the new J-Lab report: New Voices: What Works, this session will examine what is working in terms of content and sustainability. (Council of Affiliates, CCJIG, COMJIG)

Research to be presented in 3 sessions at St. Louis Convention

2011-06-09T17:15:00.004-04:00

Note: This article also appears in the Summer 2011 edition of the CCJIG newsletter

Wednesday, August 10
10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Emerging Understandings of Civic and Citizen Journalism

Moderator and discussant: Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky.

Papers and presenters:

“No Experience Necessary: The Perceived Credibility of Citizen Journalism,” Sara Netzley & Mark Hemmer, Bradley University
“News Innovation and the Negotiation of Participation,” Seth Lewis, University of Minnesota*
“Exploring Contexts in Citizen Journalism: A Conceptual Framework,” Nakho Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Not Paid to Play: A Case Study of Online Community Participants and the Effects of Non-Monetary Motivation Upon Public Journalism,” Robert Gutsche, Jr.; Rauf Arif; The University of Iowa.

*Top faculty-authored paper

Thursday, August 11
1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.
(Scholar to Scholar session)

Papers and presenters:

“The Refrigerator as a Megaphone: Addressing the Motivations of Citizen Photojournalists,” Tara Buehner, University of Oklahoma
“Interactions of News Frames and Incivility in the Political Blogosphere: Examining News Credibility and Political Trust,” Porismita Borah, Maryville University.

Discussant: Burton St. John III, Old Dominion University.

Friday, Aug. 12
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Citizen Journalism and New Technologies

Moderator and discussant: Nikhil Moro, University of North Texas.

Papers and presenters:

“Case of the UT Shooter: Citizens working around, with, and for traditional news media,” Avery Holton, University of Texas-Austin *
“Exposing the Digital News Photo Hound: A Study on the Normative Structure and Routines of Citizen Photojournalists,” Tara Buehner and Julie Jones, University of Oklahoma
“#Forward! Twitter as Citizen Journalism in the Wisconsin Labor Protests,” Aaron Veenstra, Narayanan Iyer, Namrata Bansal, Mohammad Hossain, Jiwoo Park, Jiachun Hong; Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

*Top student-authored paper

Growth of Patch, indie sites shows citizen journalism going mainstream

2011-06-09T16:59:00.005-04:00

Note: This article also appears in the Summer 2011 edition of the CCJIG newsletter

and has been cross-posted to the author's personal blog

By Jack Rosenberry
CCJIG Newsletter Editor

One of the most striking recent developments in the world of online news, and citizen journalism, has been the rapid expansion of the Patch.com network of local news sites owned by AOL.

Patch was started in 2008 by a group that included Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive. Armstrong joined AOL in early 2009, and the company acquired Patch that June. Patch sites were located in 11 communities in New Jersey and Connecticut in late 2009 but grew to about 100 sites in nine states by August 2010 and approximately 800 sites across 20 states by early 2011.

These local news sites primarily cover affluent bedroom communities that surround large cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. Each site has an editor, who is provided with equipment – a computer, cell phone and digital camera – but no office; instead, editors work from home or from community locations such as coffee shops.

More recently, Patch has moved aggressively to augment the paid professional editors with a citizen journalism component of volunteer writers and local bloggers contributing to the sites. Each site lists all of its contributors, which can run to several dozen on some sites, and a section of the home page highlights local bloggers.

But independent online community journalists have been critical of Patch, notably the idea that an outside corporate entity can ever have the true community connection that they see as the heart of local journalism. In an interview with LA Weekly, Timothy Rutt, who runs the hyperlocal site altedenablog.com, compared Patch to “Walmart moving in and driving out the mom-and-pop businesses.”

Now, Rutt and operators of some other independent sites are joining forces in a network seeking to counter the influence of Patch. The coalition, which calls itself Authentically Local, announced its formation in mid-May 2011 with 30 founding members. By the end of May it had grown to nearly 50. The list includes names that are familiar to many CCJIG members from having representatives of the sites on CCJIG convention panels – including BaristaNet, Oakland Local, West Seattle Blog, Twin Cities Daily Planet and iBrattleboro.

In a news release announcing the coalition’s formation, the members said they “have joined forces to launch an ‘Authentically Local’ branding campaign to emphasize the importance of supporting homegrown media, stores and places.”

“Local journalism doesn’t scale and it doesn’t need to scale. It needs to emerge from people deeply engaged in their local community, determined to make a difference and provide a vital service,” Lance Knobel, a co-founder of Berkeleyside.com, said in the news release.

While the Authentically Local group’s concerns are understandable, it’s not entirely clear why an a priori conclusion that “local doesn’t scale” is warranted. Operators of the Authentically Local sites are in the same situation as – and essentially fighting the same fight as – local retailers and dining establishments against national big box stores and restaurant chains. They make that analogy themselves on the AL website.

But is it necessarily and automatically the case that out-of-town ownership degrades the quality of the journalism?

For decades before online hyperlocal news coverage emerged, out-of-town ownership of small local newspapers was not the exception but the rule. And while many of those chain papers were poor to mediocre, some were pretty good – while some of the small locally owned ones were true rags. In other words, ownership had no general correlation with quality. In a similar vein, there seems to be little fundamental difference between small local newspapers being owned by large corporations (e.g. Gannett, which owned dozens of such papers but was not the only corporation that did so) and a local news website being owned by a large corporation (i.e. Patch/AOL).

Patch encourages editors to share information about themselves on their sites, and a quick review of a few sites revealed that many editors had local roots, as either natives or at least longtime residents of the communities they cover. Many have worked for local weeklies or dailies in their coverage area before joining Patch. If these individual journalists are capable and sensitive to their communities they will find good, local stories to cover. And if the editors are conscientious about soliciting and curating the work of citizen journalists in their area, local flavor and connections will emerge.

Patch is still an experiment, and one trend that has developed with ventures into online local coverage by large legacy media organizations is that such experiments have a short leash and their owners are quick to cut them loose if the economics don’t work out as hoped. Loudon Extra, TBD, and sites launched by The New York Times that were later taken over by AL member Barista.net stand as evidence of that.

But the interesting and important thing about the emergence of Patch and other legacy media forays into this arena is how they indicate that hyperlocal and citizen journalism are no longer some exotic oddity.

Instead, citizen journalism is becoming a routine part of the landscape of news coverage, a development documented by J-Lab in its New Media Makers (2009) and New Voices (2010) reports and encouraged by its Networked Journalism project.

The more routine and more expected such coverage becomes, the more it will contribute to the emerging news ecosystem, no matter who owns the site where it is published.

- - - - - - - - -

Background information in this story about Patch came from published reports in sources such as Columbia Journalism Review, Newsweek, LA Weekly and The New York Times. The author has completed a comparative content analysis of Patch sites and independent hyperlocal ones (though not specifically the Authentically Local ones); the results of that research will be presented at the Thursday Scholar-to-Scholar session at the St. Louis convention.

Community News Sites: Alive if Unprofitable

2010-10-31T19:22:00.003-04:00

A new report from J-Lab's Jan Schaffer offers a straightforward look at the status of community sites funded through the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation. This is a well-designed report that can work as teaching or research material.

The report's colorful touches will help to keep undergrads interested.

Titled New Voices: What Works, the 36-page report does just what it suggests. It identifies some of the aspects that have worked and some that haven't since the organization began in 2005 to seed start-up sites to supplement news and information in their communities.

Simply put, we examined what worked and what didn’t, what made for robust sites or led to disappointment.

The J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, offers its own summary of the report that you can read here. You can download the report in pdf form as well.

Among the findings in a section called Ten Key Takeaways are points familiar to those in CCJIG who have been investigating citizen journalism functions. Among them:

Most volunteer journalists don't last long after training. Fewer than one in 10 will become regular contributors.
University projects that rely on students need to find ways to keep their momentum even when students are not in school.
While some sites are finding ways to sustain themselves, a business model has yet to emerge to cover salaries and reap profits.

“It is most appropriate for the U.S. to train journalists in foreign countries”

2010-10-07T12:23:00.029-04:00

In America, participatory journalism might happen when citizens take part in gathering news or reporters act as participant-observers.

In Liberia, the English-speaking republic on the West coast of Africa, civic journalism appeals to reporters. But journalism too often is a negotiation with either poverty or a plaintiff-friendly libel environment. A result: Serious hurdles to reporting politics accurately and completely.

Mitch Land, interim dean of UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism, is visiting Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on invitation by the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia. Professor Land’s task is to train Liberian journalists in preparation for the general election scheduled for October of 2011.

His 10-day visit, which began September 28, has sparked discussion of whether the U.S. Department of State should train, or influence the training of, journalists in foreign countries. Going by local press coverage—here, here and here—the visit has been of some import. Professor Land spoke to me via Skype from the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia, in an hour-long conversation punctuated by two electrical power cuts at his end.

Full disclosure: Professor Land is my colleague at the School; although I spared no question, this Q&A should not be considered an exercise in journalism. I report it on his request and because it engages important issues such as American journalistic intervention.

Mitch, what are you doing in Liberia?

I've come to train reporters and editors in Liberia to help them prepare for the 2011 elections. About 30 editors and 40 reporters attended [my workshop]. I spent three days a week with reporters, interrupted with the 46th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Press Union of Liberia in Buchanan, Liberia, which is a three-hour drive from Monrovia, the capital city.

Is it appropriate for the U.S. Department of State to train journalists in foreign countries?

Absolutely. The U.S. State Department’s public diplomacy section is tasked with building capacity—which includes providing training for journalists—in every country where the U.S. has an embassy. I provide the material as I see fit with no interference from the U.S. government.

I trained publishers in Cameroon in 1994 and that was the case then, too.

What is your perception of Liberia's democracy?

Well, the phrase used around the international community is this: Liberia is stable but fragile. Warlords who carried on the long civil war, which was made into a documentary titled the Uncivil War, are running for election.

What are some issues of press freedom in Liberia? For example, is a consolidation of ownership causing wealthy parties to have a disproportionate influence? Is there any strong-arm political interference?

The top three issues I’ve observed: 1. Resisting the economic temptation of receiving help from politicians who would wish to influence the reporting in their direction; 2. Lack of economic resources to do their job—to get out to the rural areas and serve the goals of civic journalism; 3. Working together, rather than always in competition.

What did the journalists take away from your keynote speech at the PUL event?

I tried to emphasize the importance of balancing their freedom to report on the elections in 2011 and their responsibility to do a professional job. Establishing credibility in the face of overwhelming odds; their work is an uphill battle.

Political leaders and political candidates are reluctant to confide in reporters if they believe they're not prepared to report ethically and remain professional. Of course, this can also be an excuse for politicians not to be transparent.

How would you define credibility? What are some of those “overwhelming odds” that Liberian journalists face?

It means the same thing here as it means in the United States, reporting ethically and following professional standards that include rigorous fact-checking, proper identification of sources and correct attribution. One of the first object lessons was a photo of me, which appeared on the back page of one of the leading newspapers: the cutline identified me as the chairman of the National Elections Commission.

Overwhelming odds: These journalists work with limited resources, such as lack of funding to travel upcountry to cover stories; poor roads and lack of transport options, poorly equipped and dimly lit newsrooms, and the biggest drawback—paltry salaries.

This is due, in large part, to the struggling economy here as well as to the consequences of a bloody civil war. The electrical grid was severely damaged when the major energy station was sabotaged. The president of the country [Ellen Johnson Sirleaf] has made this one of her major priorities since being elected in 2005.

What is Liberia’s media scene like? What newspapers or other news outlets were represented at your workshop?

The number of media outlets changes all the time because independent newspapers are springing up in this open and free environment. I might add here that the Liberian legislature has just passed an open-records bill: FOIA. The president has promised to sign the bill.

Four to six daily newspapers seem to dominate, but an average print run for any one of these newspapers is only 5,000 copies: the Daily Observer, FrontPage, the National Chronicle, New Liberia, the News, the Inquirer, and New Vision. I would say the most innovative of all these is FrontPage, which started out as an online newspaper. The literacy rate here is very low.

Among the participants were about four community radio stations, which was very encouraging because this means that rural areas are getting news where so many people cannot read or write. Also two television stations were present. Of the 40 reporters, at least 8 were from community radio stations.

Do Liberian newspapers endorse election candidates, as American newspapers do?

It's likely that two or three newspapers tend to be partisan. This is a problem. We covered this issue pretty thoroughly. It's not always out in the open, but yes, it is my understanding that this took place during the last election.

The journalists [in my workshop] agreed that this isn't a good practice; it's only acceptable if the newspaper makes it very clear that this candidate is being endorsed, but the endorsement appears on the editorial page and must not influence the quality of the reporting.

As you know, Jay Rosen has published and written quite a bit on his own blog about the importance of reporters and editors creating a Citizens Agenda for covering elections. His ideas inspired my lecture on this point, as well as the assignments I gave both cohorts. The assignment was to give them a trial run at creating a Citizens Agenda.

They really got into this and seemed to become excited about the role journalists here can play in at least mitigating against the usual “horse-race” coverage we see so much, especially in the United States. Lewis T. Togba, a reporter for the Liberia Broadcasting System said, “Formulating the citizens agenda means a lot to me and was very new ground for me.” That sentiment was shared widely during the workshop. Chloe Roberts, a producer for The Star Newspaper, gave the three-day workshop a 100% on her evaluation form.

What is a “citizens agenda”? Did your workshop make a direct difference to any Liberian journalist?

I had the participants separate into groups of six persons each. Each group had to come up with what they thought are the most important issues Liberian citizens would tell them mattered in the upcoming election cycle.

Second, we talked about preparing to cover elections ahead of time. For example, covering speeches—what to look for, how to create a checklist so that before a speech is given, they have an idea of attendance; have their interviews set up ahead of time; the three-source rule of reporting a story, even speeches, etc. Third, anticipating problems that occur on election day: number of polling stations; adequate number of ballots; phone numbers of election supervisors. Fourth, best practices in journalism: my 25 tips for effective writing; reporting ideas from my colleagues at the Mayborn School: Kathie Hinnen, Tracy Everbach, George Getschow and yourself. Finally, I talked to them about the differences between traditional journalism and public/civic journalism.

Please travel safely back to Denton!

Thanks, Nikhil. As I de-briefed with Dehab Ghebreab, the American public affairs officer, I told her, “The older I get the more I realize how important it is to do things that matter the most in one’s career.” Working with journalists here matters a great deal to me: helping to build journalism capacity in a part of the world I have come to love.

____

Photo: Mitch Land (left) with Ernest Kiazolu, who is information assistant in the public diplomacy section of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia and formerly a reporter and producer with Star Radio, Monrovia. (Picture by Peter Quaqua, president of the Press Union of Liberia)

Other interviews:

Dan Gillmor: "Emerging entry barriers may deal a 'hammer blow' to media innovations"

Robert G. Picard: "News organizations will rely upon a greater variety of revenue streams..."

Jim O'Shea: "Newspapers have served the interests of investors at the expense of readers"

Leonard Witt: "I want conversation, I want collective intelligence, but I also want sound journalism"

Emerging entry barriers may deal a “hammer blow” to new media innovations

2010-09-18T13:27:00.015-04:00

Dan Gillmor has worked for many newspapers, but he is not quite an ink-stained wretch. His passion is for digital media. Ever since he operated a blog for the San Jose Mercury News in the mid-1990s, Mr. Gillmor has found a studious obsession in the intersections of technology and journalism.

Nowadays, Mr. Gillmor directs the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. He says he loves it when “risk is at the bottom of the pile” of an entrepreneur’s concerns. Risk-taking is important, but ownership, appreciating ambiguity, and moving quickly are essential.

“Smart companies don’t punish failed ideas even if they don’t give any incentives for failure,” Mr. Gillmor told a panel on business models at the AEJMC conference in Denver August 7. Media operations ought to encourage entrepreneurial processes internally and not punish failures when individuals took appropriate, smart risks. In this instant-messenger conversation with Nikhil Moro of UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism, Mr. Gillmor offered an expansion of that panel presentation, and then some.

Moro: You have said, “Digital media have a nearly zero barrier to entry.” Is that changing, though? Would we do well to expect entry barriers over the next five years?

Gillmor: The barriers to creating things are dropping steadily and are nearly zero now. That trend will continue. But we could well see new barriers arise, and they'll be designed to a) protect the incumbents; b) assist law enforcement; and c) keep dissent in line. They'll revolve around net neutrality, intellectual property and public safety issues, which will be used to clamp down on what we can do online.

For example, if the telecom companies get what they want on net neutrality -- the right to determine which bits their customers can bring down to their devices, in what order and at what speed, if they are delivered at all -- that will be a hammer blow to innovative new media services. It’s not an exaggeration to say that free speech in the digital age depends on the choices residing in the hands of the customers, not the carriers.

On intellectual property, Hollywood and its allies are continuing to push for ever-stricter copyright laws and enforcement that moves us toward a pay-per-view world of media where we need permission to use anything anyone else has created in the creation of a new work. That’s contrary to our traditions, and it would hamper innovation and creativity. All culture and science stands on the shoulders of what came before; the copyright system threatens both. Licensing is a related issue. Most recently, the software industry won a truly terrible ruling in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that software licenses allow companies to restrict use of their products solely to the person who bought them, preventing the person from selling or even giving it to someone else. How would you like it if the book publisher said only you could read the book you just bought? Libraries see what this means and they are quite correctly terrified -- and we all should be.

Then you have the many people, especially in law enforcement, who’d clamp down on free speech in the name of public safety. The latest example is the shameful actions of a group of state attorneys general who basically forced craigslist to shut down its adult-services section. They had absolutely no legal basis for this; in fact, the law specifically shields Internet service providers from liability for what others post on their sites, provided they take down illegal material upon notification. In addition, craigslist had gone way further than others in this market to assist law enforcement in its investigations of prostitution, especially child prostitution. The rest of the Internet industry sat quiet while these posturing politicians whacked craigslist, and they’re going to regret it; there will be a push soon to repeal the law that shields providers from liability for what others post -- and that law is a principal reason we have a free and robust debate online today. (Note: Craig Newmark is a friend, and he has been a funder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, where I was a Fellow.)

Moro: You seem to take a libertarian approach to content regulation, frowning upon a search product with Google’s market dominance having a “nannyish approach.” Google Instant should not be “making decisions for us that it should let us be making,” you have said. Why does self-regulation work? If users chose to ignore libelous or fighting words, would such words disappear?

Gillmor: I'm a big believer that the answer to bad speech is better speech, but I'm not a defender of libel or language specifically designed to elicit a violent response. Even there, however, we don't want to get into prior restraint.

Moro: Are you referring to oligopolistic trends in America’s news industry when you say, "We are seeing a market failure"? When one search product or a few ISPs dominate, should we be concerned that the barriers to accessing news would actually increase?

Gillmor: The main market failure in journalism was the monopoly and oligopoly era, certainly from the point of view of the media's most important customers, the advertisers. They were squeezed unmercifully by publishers and broadcasters. The monopoly/oligopoly, compounded by corporate consolidation, led to a dearth of variety for readers, too. I'm always troubled when one company dominates anything. Competition is healthy for the market ecosystem, even if it's hard on the competitors.

Moro: You have said, “The slate is blank as far as the future of the news industry is concerned.” Please elaborate.

Gillmor: We're in the early days of the creative destruction phase, as Schumpeter would have put it, in media evolution. What's coming is going to be a much more diverse ecosystem, I hope and believe, that will include many different business models. Some will dominate, as tends to happen in all economic sectors, but it's not clear what they'll be yet. Meanwhile, new kinds of techniques for media and journalism and collaboration are coming along. The opportunities seem fairly limitless in that context. It'll be a hugely messy transition, with a lot of problems along the way, but I'm convinced it'll be a positive evolution overall.

Among the problems: We don’t know what we can trust and what we can’t trust when we see or hear something online. It was a lot easier when we had limited media sources. Now we have to do more work ourselves, as I’m writing in my new book. But the effort is well worth it.

Another issue is the reality that we’re losing, at least temporarily, some of the kinds of journalism we really need -- especially the journalism that holds powerful people accountable and lets them know that someone might be paying attention when they misbehave. It’s not clear how the market will serve that need, and we need a lot of creativity.

Moro: You have said entrepreneurship is social ownership, that is ownership of the process and outcome rather than of stock or money.

Gillmor: Entrepreneurship isn’t solely about owning stock or making money -- though it may well include that and usually does. Paraphrasing my colleague CJ Cornell on this, it's also very much about owning the process and the outcome of your work. It means, in part, that you have to be committed and focused.

Moro: Do you have a favorite example of an emerging entrepreneur in the news industry?

Gillmor: Hope you’ll understand why I want to duck this one -- there are so many cool thing going on that I’d hate to only name one. But I'm watching a number of projects with great interest. Some are for-profit, others are more in the social-enterpreneurship category or outright nonprofits. If my South by Southwest talk
is accepted, though, I'm going to list somewhere between 20 and 100 (hope to go with the higher number) projects that make me glad to be in the field right now.

Moro: You have said, “I am not clear which business model is going to emerge.” So what are the options?

Gillmor: Everything is on the table for revenue, but I think that someone from NPR said that there are lots of revenue sources and we have to go after many of them in every kind of enterprise. It'll be a blend, then, from advertising, subscription, patronage, donations, services, ancillary products and more -- and people will find new ways to bring willing buyers to sellers. The business side of journalism needs more innovation right now than the doing-journalism side.

Moro: If the Web is about iteration – anything we do, we must fix on a continuous basis – can the Web ever provide a medium of record?

Gillmor: Sure it can. You archive everything you do and make sure it's available, as Wikipedia does. You can go back to see every change made in articles there. The thing we need to add (and I'm working on a blog posting about this) is a way to create a new page with a new permalink for changed versions, with attached metadata, so that when someone refers to something we know which version it was. This will be pretty complex to pull off, I suspect. I'm thinking a lot about this because of my new book, which I'm envisioning as a 1.0 version of a book that I'll rerelease as a 2.0 in a year, and possibly with a lot of in-between updates. Doing this raises the issue of citations; if we're not working from a common text how do we know what we're citing is the same stuff.

Moro: Speaking of your forthcoming book, don't you plan to self-publish it? In your 2004 book We the Media, you had invoked a history of self publishing: Paine’s Common Sense and Hamilton-Madison-Jay’s Federalist Papers were all self-published and, as it turned out, either inspired the anti-colonial revolution or shaped America’s constitution. In what circumstances do you see an acceptance of self-publishing in academic tenure? How do you measure quality, rigor or originality in a self-published work?

Gillmor: Yes. See this for background. I'll have a test of self-publishing acceptance with this book, because I'm very much hoping that educators will use it. There's a growing understanding that traditional publishers aren't serving the marketplace very well anymore, especially for authors. The quality, rigor and originally of self-published books ranges just as widely as in blogs; a lot of it is not so hot, but there's some extraordinary work being done.

Moro: Can you share a couple of examples of "extraordinary work" from self-published scholars (other than yourself) in journalism or mass communication?

Gillmor: Not offhand -- I haven't really looked around at this. But the blogging being done by academics is extraordinarily good in many cases, and I believe that counts.

Again, I hesitate to cite specifics because there are so many; I don’t want to suggest that these are the only bloggers worthy of attention. But take a look at Brad DeLong’s blog at Berkeley and Balkinization, a brilliant law group-blog, for starters.

Moro: Some 15 years ago, you had published one of the earliest blogs operated by any journalist for a news organization. How have blogs unfolded since then? And would you list, say, five ways in which they would evolve over the next five years?

Gillmor: Blogs have become an entirely mainstream activity, but they still range all over the map. For the first several years of my blog I was the only one doing it, as far as I knew, in the traditional media. Now everyone does it, and that's great; blogs are an absolutely natural extension of the print and broadcast brands. I'd be hard pressed to list five ways they'll evolve, because like almost everyone else I didn't anticipate micro-blogging (Twitter) or what people do inside Facebook and other social networks, which is a social blogging system of sorts (among other things). I'd expect people to keep stretching the boundaries, and I'd especially expect the blog platform providers to add valuable capabilities that make the most of the mobile computing we're all increasingly doing. The important thing to remember is that blogging is a tool, and blogs are websites. Beyond that you can do almost anything.

Moro: Have blogs, and other social media, become more social and less personal?

Gillmor: It depends on who's doing them. I don't have data, but I'd guess that this is the case.

Moro: You have said, “People often ask who, in the anyone-can-publish world, is a journalist? I tell them it’s the wrong question. The right one: What is journalism?” So what is journalism? Please list your top five principles of journalism.

Gillmor: The principles you've asked for are one of the key chapters in my new book. Four of them are the same ones that have applied to traditional journalism -- accuracy, thoroughness, fairness, independence -- plus one more that I consider essential for the future: transparency.

Moro: Transparency in what?

Gillmor: Transparency in telling the audience your biases and world view; explaining when it makes sense how and why you did what you did; and much more. Journalism has been a black box, and it’s way overdue that journalists open up a bit. I’m not asking people to post their tax returns online, but I do think they should tell us, for example, when they have a stake (ideological or financial) in the outcome. And the more audiences understand about the process of creating trustworthy information, the more likely they may be to give it some trust.

Moro: Thank you, Dan, for talking to me!

Gillmor: My pleasure, Nikhil.
Photograph courtesy of Joi Ito via Creative Commons
Also see:
Robert G. Picard: "News organizations will rely upon a greater variety of revenue streams..."
Jim O'Shea: "Newspapers have served the interests of investors at the expense of readers"
Leonard Witt: "I want conversation, I want collective intelligence, but I also want sound journalism"

Call for AEJMC 2011 Panel Proposals

2010-09-08T09:14:00.002-04:00

The Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group (CCJIG) invites panel proposals for the 2011 AEJMC convention to be held in St. Louis, Missouri from Aug. 10-13.

Please email your panel proposal to Co-Vice Chair Kirsten Johnson (johnsonka@etown.edu) as a Word attachment by October 15.

Past panels have focused on blogging discourse, credibility of citizen journalism practices, citizen contributions and politics, user collaborative activities, community conversations in hyperlocal media, newsroom projects, practicing civic and citizen journalism in a multicultural environment, and teaching civic and citizen journalism.

Panel proposals for 2011 may address, but are not limited to, the following broad themes:

1. Defining who citizen journalists are, and the roles they serve in their communities. Defining what is and is not citizen journalism.

2. Emerging models and best practices in teaching of civic/citizen journalism.

3. Media convergence and using new tools to facilitate citizen journalism.

4. Local/global practices and perceptions of civic/citizen journalism.

5. Research techniques used by civic/citizen journalism scholars. In general, address topics that are relevant to current discussions in journalism, politics, technology, democracy, or philosophy.

Panels addressing issues of cultural and racial diversity are encouraged.

Your panel proposal should mention the following components in order:

Type (i.e., PF&R, Teaching, Research), a tentative title, a possible moderator, the possible panelists (limit to three so we can work on linking with other interest groups and divisions), a brief description of the panel, possible co-sponsors (divisions or interest groups), and contact information. Also provide speaker demographic and funding estimates (see sample proposal). Selected proposals are compiled into a single document, with proposals from other divisions and interest groups, in order to be considered for co-sponsorship and scheduling. Many will later be revised or expanded as part of the joint planning process.

A sample proposal is available at http://www.has.vcu.edu/civic-journalism/Sample_Panel_Proposal.doc We look forward to your proposals!

Kirsten A. Johnson, Ph.D. Co-Vice Chair, Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group johnsonka@etown.edu

“News organizations will rely upon a greater variety of revenue streams… and their proportions will vary”

2010-08-12T10:48:00.011-04:00

Sustainable business models have emerged as a Holy Grail of America’s news industry. Frustratingly elusive, such models have caused much mind-wringing by a variety of media scholars, one of whom is Robert G. Picard.

A leading light of the media business, Picard holds the Hamrin Professorship in media economics at the Jönköping International Business School, Sweden, and is a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at University of Oxford. In this instant-messenger conversation with Nikhil Moro of UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism, Picard expands on views he articulated a few days earlier at the AEJMC conference in Denver.

Professor Picard, you have said, “The real problem we have today is too much news.” What do you mean by that?

We have too much news in the sense that we are bombarded with news from print, broadcast, Internet, mobile, and outdoor sources. It has made certain types of news ubiquitous and commoditized it. Flow of events news is particularly widely available. Consequently one cannot create much value with it.

When news turns into a commodity, does its quality tend to suffer?

It can. However, one can have quality information and news that is commoditized, which primarily strips it of economic value, but it may still have some social value.

You have said that the news industry’s problem is not revenue as much as a poor quality of its product. Elaborate?

The product problem today is that most news outlets are filling themselves up with inexpensive flow of events news from news agencies and features from feature agencies and syndicates that serve all types of media. The end result is that there is very little unique provided by different news organizations. Because some provide it free or nearly free, it makes it difficult to get the public to pay for news. News organizations have to pay attention to their products and ensure that they are higher quality and unique compared to competitors that did not previously exist.

Can you name five attributes of great journalism that also help the business side of news operations?

Uniqueness, credibility, specialization, knowledgeable analysis, and application to readers and listeners' lives.

How would you define credibility in news?

Credibility results from audience faith that the news source is primarily concerned with the public's interest, that it is making efforts to be fair and accurate, and that it is an honest broker of information. It is not just something news organizations do, but something the public BELIEVES they do.

Can a business model define the product’s social value?

Social value comes from news and information that helps us understand the world about us, gives us knowledge needed to participate in society, and helps us interact effectively with those around out. That kind of material is relative expensive to produce and only small percentage of news outlets engage in that kind of news production. A business model—the parts that define what the product is and how it will be produced—can incorporate activities most likely to produce social value.

The news industry’s movement from mass medium to “niche medium”may be alienating mass advertisers. But can any good come of it?

Perhaps. It will begin to move news organizations away from being primarily providers of non-news content (75% or more of content in newspapers, for example, isn't news) toward a focus on news and providing in ways other distributors do not, and in better ways than other providers.

Is the health of journalism related to the stability of news organizations?

No. News organizations are in poor health today, but journalism is in good health. I say that because not just journalists but public officials and the public are discussing the importance of journalism and journalism practice and seeking new ways to ensure society has the kind of journalism necessary for public life and democracy to take place. The focus on the functions of journalism and how to achieve them in the future indicates an esteem for and support of journalism that has not been evident for many years.

You have said that the “mass media model won’t go away completely, but it will not be the primary model of newspapers in the future.”

The mass media business model is dependent upon creating an audience of such size that advertisers will be willing to pay a disproportionate part of the costs of operations so audiences can access content at a low price or free (as in television). Some advertisers will still be interested in reaching the smaller audiences that news produces, but additional revenue will be needed from other sources. In the future, the business model will include revenue generation from more sources.

What might be the other sources?

Raising the price to audiences is one. Engaging in commercial activities that can subsidize news operations is another option. Obtaining grants and donations may work for some providers.

Does Rupert Murdoch’s payment model have a chance when competitors such as BBC Online, which is funded by a license fee, are offering similar content for free?

That depends on how one defines success. Although BBC Online provides news and features, there is some unique content in papers such as The Times of London and there are people in Britain and elsewhere who will wish to access it for a fee. Those numbers will be far lower than those who want it free, however. There is no reader income when it is free and at least some when it is paid. From that standpoint it will be a success. However, a second question is whether advertising revenue lost from the reducing readers with the pay wall will decline to the point it outweighs the new income.

So is free a model?

It is a model, but only if someone other than readers, viewers, or listeners is willing to pay the price. Although many think of it as free, the BBC and its online operations are not and are paid for by the licence fees of nearly every British household. In general, free is not a good price from the producer’s standpoint, but consumers may like.

Professor Dan Gillmor said last week, “I am not clear which business model is going to emerge.” What is your assessment? Regardless, would you like to share a list of five emerging business models that are most likely to prevail?

It would be nice to say there is a single model that will emerge but there will be many, depending upon the unique characteristics and situations of each news organizations. I don't think it is possible to say there will be clearly separate models. What I foresee is that all news organizations will rely upon a greater variety of revenue streams than in the past and that the proportions from each will vary. Even not-for-profit media such as the BBC, NPR, and The Guardian now have multiple income streams, including commercial income.

If American newspapers have been losing 1-2% of their audience every year for 40 years, what is different now?

The current situation did not happen suddenly and the Internet is not to blame, but is compounding the long-term challenge. What has happened it that circulation has now reached a critical tipping point. Combined with new developments in digital media, both the public and advertisers are changing their consumption patterns and reconsidering all their media use.

Please name a couple of your favorite news outlets, perhaps newspapers that you read every day.

I regularly read The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Guardian in hard copy when they are available and otherwise online. CBS News and BBC are my main broadcast sources.

Any favorite Swedish newspaper?

When I am in Sweden I favor Dagens Nyheter.

Do you see a consolidation in the news industry in America? If so, at what levels?

Consolidation is already occurring at the local level through joint ownership and joint ventures between local newspapers, television stations, and cable channels. At the national and global level we are seeing major media operating several outlets and news services and we are seeing use of bureaus and reporters from other news organizations in gathering international news. When organizations encounter financial problems, consolidation is a normal business response.

Are you elated or bothered by consolidation at the national/global levels?

Both. It is a two-edged sword that has to be viewed with caution. From one view it is improving news provisions in some outlets, reducing costs, and making news more readily available. From another view, however, it reduces the number of news and information sources and creates fewer independent sources. That said, we are better off today in terms of the number of news providers at the national and international levels than in the past and the number is growing. Even at the local level we are now seeing a variety of new startups If the entrants balance the consolidation we will not have a problem; if they don’t, we will need to be worried about the effects.

Would you share some wisdom? -- your top five tips for entrepreneurs that are about to start a media startup such as a hyper-local or community news portal.

1) Do something different from newspapers and television stations in your cities.

2) Focus on what your readers need and are not getting elsewhere.

3) Make the public part of your effort; draw on their knowledge and expertise; allow them to participate in many different ways.

4) Pay attention to the management of the enterprise and ensure you carry out tasks that will make it sustainable.

5) Do not assume that merely because you are doing something good, it will be perceived as valuable and useful by the public.

Thanks for the stimulating interview!

You are welcome. I have enjoyed it.

Getting to Know Your CCJIG Officers

2010-06-25T09:59:00.005-04:00

A Question and Answer Session
By Anne Golden Worsham
CCJIG Secretary

In a series of e-mail interviews, this year's officers of the Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group shared some details about how they became interested in the field, and some personal information as well:

Mary Beth Callie (Interest Group Chair)

My passion for all things “civic” is likely rooted in the fact that I was born on the Fourth of July, just outside Philadelphia. I grew up fascinated by early American history and the Bicentennial. Later on, through my doctoral work in Media Studies and Public Policy, I would begin to connect the ideals of civic republicanism, participatory democracy, and the “common good” with questions abut the role of the media in a democracy. Through historical and case study analysis, I examined the deep structure of corporate capitalism, and how privatized control of the broadcast airwaves was/is framed in terms of the “public interest.”

My passion for civic and citizen journalism can also be traced by my work on citizen’s campaign for comprehensive mass transit campaign in Tucson. This experience taught me a lot about the need for a citizen engaged press that supports community problem-solving.

Dessert greatest temptation and random fact

Soft homemade chocolate chip cookies, or the dough, with a glass of milk. My dad’s cousin, Del Callie, has owned Callie’s Candy Kitchen in the Pennyslvania Pocono mountains for almost 60 years. It was, and still is, a favorite family vacation destination for me and my siblings.

Deborah S. Chung (Co-Vice Chair and Programming Chair)

How did you get interested in civic and citizen journalism?
While working on my doctoral degree at Indiana University and pondering dissertation ideas in 2001 and 2002, I became increasingly fascinated in the concept of interactivity and audience participation. I had been formerly interested in the core ideals of civic journalism and saw the link with technology and citizens as promise for the future of journalism and potential for a thriving democratic society. I see online news publications as places and spaces that can offer more egalitarian opportunities for audiences to participate in civic life and become more actively engaged citizens. As my research interests focus on the changing dynamics between communication professionals and their audiences through emergent information communication technologies (ICTs) and specifically in the context of online news, I saw a tremendous opportunity in pursuing this line of research that could meaningfully contribute to our understanding of the potentially changing definitions and boundaries of journalism.

Share a random fact about yourself:
I am an American Idol fan, especially for seasons 1, 2, 3, 6 and most definitely 8. I have dialed in 500 + times for the contestants I deemed worthy of winning the title. I saved all numbers on speed dial each time (my phone, husband’s phone, home phone). Just love participatory culture!

Kirsten A. Johnson (Co-Vice Chair)

How did you get interested in civic and citizen journalism?
I became interested in citizen journalism in 2004 while I was a doctoral student at Drexel University in Philadelphia. As I was searching for dissertation topics I became very interested in blogging and how journalists were using this tool to tell stories. While researching journalistic blogging I stumbled across the work of Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. After reading “We Media” it became clear to me that citizen journalism would be the focus of my dissertation. Since completing my dissertation in 2007 I have continued to do research in this area, specifically in the area of markers of credibility on citizen journalism web sites.

Which dessert is the greatest temptation for you?
My husband’s homemade chocolate covered marshmallows are my greatest temptation. It’s great being married to a chocolate maker!

Glenn Scott (Research Chair)

How did you get interested in citizen journalism?
Before my mid-career move into higher education, I worked as a newspaper journalist, mainly as a full-time metro columnist for a daily paper. In that role, I enjoyed a ton of traditional-styled interaction with readers by talking on the phone, shooting cards through the mail, and meeting people at events and speeches. Metro columnists give a lot of speeches; every club and service group needs a program. I've never understood the conceit that journalists work apart from non-journalists. Almost all we do -- and all we know -- is concocted from shared human experience and communication. So when I became a researcher -- and as digitization was serving to reshape journalism -- I had a practiced interest in considering how news organizations might widen communication flows with readers (or users) to enrich the process of newsmaking.
All this means I first approached the practices of civic and citizen journalism from the production side. My initial questions dealt with why and how news organizations are widening discourse with interested consumers, and with what effect. Now I'm also eager to learn more about initiatives that begin outside traditional newsrooms and that might, at some point, intersect with the practices of professional news workers. This is clearly a growth area, and I'd encourage interested researchers to see what you might explore.

Which dessert is the greatest temptation for you?
Vanilla ice cream on a hot brownie. Willing to share.

Sue Ellen Christian (Teaching Chair)
How did you get interested in civic and citizen journalism?
When I left full-time journalism for academia, I was looking for projects involving creative activity. I found my inspiration through a grant that provided me with the financial support and vision to launch diversity-related community journalism projects that teamed up undergraduate journalism students with a local public high school newspaper staff. My interest in civic journalism and promoting coverage of unique community issues grew from there.
Share a random fact about yourself:/
I love Cocoa-Puffs but hate Apple Jacks, and enjoy doing pottery.

Jack Rosenberry (Newsletter Editor; chair 2007-2008)

How did you get interested in civic and citizen journalism?
In my case, it came about through my desire to find something related to online, interactive journalism for a dissertation topic circa 2003. As I read about what was going on in the field, the idea occurred to me that interactive, audience-engaged journalism and civic engagement were two closely related topics. When I attended an AEJMC pre-conference in Toronto in 2004 organized by Len Witt and co-sponsored by the (then) Civic Journalism Interest Group (now CCJIG), the ideas really started to coalesce for me. A few months later I proposed a dissertation topic built around the idea of how legacy media could use their interactive online sites to improve civic engagement; the actual title of the resulting dissertation was “The Fourth Estate in the Networked Age: A Framework for Online Public Affairs Coverage.” I’ve been involved with CCJIG ever since, and the ideas built into the dissertation have framed my ongoing research since then as well.

Share a random fact about yourself:
As a big National Hockey League fan (and especially Buffalo Sabres fan) I am disappointed to see the end of the NHL season and already looking forward to the beginning of the next one in October. PS: Congrats to the Blackhawks and their fans. It was a great run for the franchise and the city of Chicago.

Anne Golden Worsham (Secretary)

How did you get interested in civic and citizen journalism?
My first newspaper editor was one of my greatest teachers. He strongly believed in citizen, civic and community journalism and inculcated these values into the minds and souls of the journalists working under him. He valued the written contributions of citizens, as he felt that this was part of the civic conversation that brought understanding to different factions in the community. He was excited about the civic dialogue occurring on the newspaper’s website. He also felt that the newspaper should be a problem solver for the community and a source of civic conversation and storytelling. My editor felt that a good newspaper article could be the dialogue that should be happening in the community but often wasn’t occurring because of misunderstandings and partisanship. I worked for the newspaper for several years as a journalist and an editor and then pursued my master’s and doctoral degrees. Throughout my professional and academic career I have carried this value system with me.

Which dessert is the greatest temptation for you?
I have a weakness for Swedish fish. Also, my husband makes wonderful desserts and I have trouble resisting his blueberry cobblers, dessert crepes and trifles.

AEJMC Preconvention Opportunity: Journalism Schools as News Providers

2010-05-21T13:28:00.003-04:00

AEJMC Preconvention Conference

Journalism Schools as News Providers:
Challenges and Opportunities
Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Time: 3:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Cost: $39 (Includes networking reception, limited to 100 participants)

Produced by: Baruch College's Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions and Kennesaw State University’s Center for Sustainable Journalism in collaboration with the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

Register Now at the AEJMC Conference Site: https://www.applyweb.com/public/register?s=aejmc7

As newspapers shrink, journalism schools are filling gaps in news coverage through student journalism. There are clear benefits to the students, schools and public, along with challenges. In perhaps the most widely publicized legal confrontation for a journalism school, state prosecutors subpoenaed records related to Medill’s investigation of a 31-year-old murder conviction. What kinds of journalism are schools producing for the public? What are the challenges, risks and best practices? How might your school be involved and what precautions can your school take? This four-hour pre-conference will include case studies and experts in Pro-Am journalism, journalism education and media law from journalism schools and departments nationwide and includes a networking reception. Here is our line-up of confirmed speakers:

Panel One: What Is Changing and Why
1. Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University — Moderator
2. Karen Dunlap, President and Managing Director of the Poynter Institute
3. Lynda Kraxberger, Professor and Chair of Convergence Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism
4. Nicholas Lemann , Dean, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
5. Geneva Overholser, Director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Panel Two: Grappling with Legal Risks and Other Challenges
1. Geanne Rosenberg, Founding Chair, Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions, City University of New York’s Baruch College and Associate Professor of Law and Ethics, City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism — Moderator
2. David Ardia, Co-founder and Director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society
3. George Freeman, Assistant General Counsel and Newsroom Lawyer, The New York Times Company.
4. Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota
5. Rose Ann Robertson, Associate Dean, School of Communication, American University
6. Steven D. Zansberg, Media Lawyer and Partner, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, L.L.P.

Panel Three: Innovative Approaches to Community Journalism
1. Steve Shepard, Founding Dean, City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism – Moderator
2. Joe Bergantino, Director and Senior Investigative Reporter of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University.
3. Lydia Chavez Professor, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
4. Richard Jones Editor for New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute’s The Local: East Village Project
5. Leonard Witt, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University
6. Executive Producer, Reese Felts Newsroom, UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Preconference Co-Directors: Geanne Rosenberg and Leonard Witt
Preconference Advisors:
1. Susan King, Vice President, External Affairs, Director of Journalism Initiative, Special initiatives and Strategy, Carnegie Corporation of New York
2. Eric Newton, Vice President for Journalism Program, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

This event would not be possible without the generous support of the Harnisch Family Philanthropies.

For further information, please call Professor Geanne Rosenberg at (646) 312-3969.

Sign up for this session on the AEJMC Conference Registration form at:

https://www.applyweb.com/public/register?s=aejmc7

"Newspapers have served the interests of investors at the expense of readers"

2010-05-03T13:17:00.031-04:00

James O'Shea, formerly a top editor of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, is a gingery advocate of public interest journalism. Mr. O'Shea edits Chicago News Cooperative which, in only five months of operation, has found a regular client in The New York Times, for which it produces two weekly pages.

Does Chicago News Cooperative represent a sustainable business model for America’s beleaguered news industry? I Q&A'ed with Mr. O’Shea via instant messenger on the sidelines of the 11th International Symposium on Online Journalism at which he had unveiled, as revenues of his venture, journalistic services, philanthropy, ads, and a $2-a-week fee from reader-members of the cooperative. In our conversation, Mr. O’Shea elaborated on that business model and on the redemptive value of public interest journalism for emerging news operations.

Nikhil Moro: Jim, congratulations on Chicago News Cooperative’s stupendous success. How does it feel to be only five months old but have two weekly pages published in The New York Times?

James O’Shea: It feels great, although I would feel better if I had all of the funding in hand to implement the website we are developing. The New York Times will be only one element of the cooperative. The Times is our first customer and a great one. It is a legacy media institution that is quite interested in experimentation while adhering to the high standards it has always pursued.

Moro: Can you name some of the “high standards” by which you measure good journalism?

O’Shea: Sure. The Times is a rigorously edited newspaper. The Chicago copy is originated in Chicago and edited here but then it is copy edited in New York. We share values such as accuracy, original reporting and balance in our stories. I always say that we report, we don't just repeat. Times editors examine our copy with the same rigor that they apply to their own writers.

Moro: What does “cooperative” mean? We don't seem to hear the old industrial revolution term much in American businesses. Can you give an example of the finest public interest journalism produced by Chicago News Cooperative?

O’Shea: By cooperative, we mean a news organization in which readers join us in developing ways to cover the news and finance the costs of news gathering through a $2 a week membership fee. It gives readers a sense of ownership in the news. Public interest journalism focuses on holding public officials and civic and commercial institutions in the community accountable.

One of the best examples I can think of is coverage of the death penalty when I was running the newsroom at the Chicago Tribune. Our reporters examined whether the death penalty was fairly applied -- that is did a poor, black man living in Illinois have a better chance of being sentenced to death for a crime than a more affluent white man? Our reporting suggested that the answer to that question was “Yes” and the stories we wrote prompted the then Republican governor of Illinois to slap a moratorium on executions in the state until reforms were undertaken. That is an excellent example of public interest journalism, the kind that gives voice to those who can't afford a megaphone.

One of our first stories at the CNC was a piece in which we reported on the huge profits being logged by the company that paid the city to take over Chicago’s parking meter franchise. It is a secretive process and we showed how the company that got the contract was making lots of money off it and raised questions about whether citizens of Chicago would have been better off keeping the franchise.

Moro: Didn't Mencken or Dunne, or some other muckraker, say that journalism must comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable? In that role, journalism would be, in itself, a function of public service.

O’Shea: Yes, I agree.

Moro: What are your plans for community journalism in the Chicago area?

O’Shea: As we develop our website, we are looking for opportunities to partner with community journalism practitioners in the city. We would like to develop profiles of all major schools in the city and I believe that we could help community journalists in this area and that they could help us.

Moro: As an expert in the newspaper industry, whose decline is the subject of your forthcoming book, would you say that Chicago News Cooperative represents a business model that could provide a future for the news industry?

O’Shea: Over the last 30 years, I think the newspaper industry spent entirely too much effort serving the interests of its advertisers and investors at the expense of readers. We must reconnect with readers and EARN their respect. This is an effort to do that. If it works, and I wouldn't be expending so much of my time and effort on the coop if I didn't think it would work, then the coop model could become a strong element of the future of journalism. We desperately need journalists and journalism is this country. This is an effort to figure out how we can finance the kind of journalism that the nation and the nation's journalists need more than ever.

Moro: How many journalists does Chicago News Cooperative employ? How much copy do you produce a week? Is your partnership with WTTW a convergence of staff, or more?

O’Shea: Currently, we have about a dozen journalists working with us. We produce about 8,000 words a week. Our partnership with WTTW is getting better by the day. We recently hired a joint reporter. CNC pays half his salary and WTTW pays half. He works for both of us, using the raw material of journalism that we produce as a base to extend his reporting and create broadcast journalism and video content for WTTW and our website. This is much better than a print reporting simply handing over his story to a broadcast outlet and then talking about it on air. We have a partnership that I hope will simply improve with time.

Moro: Dan Gillmor is optimistic about the news industry perhaps because, as he quipped at ISOJ a few days ago, “It doesn't cost us anything to try anything new any more.” Would you agree?

O’Shea: I agree with Dan. I am an optimist. So is Peter Osnos, the co-founder of Chicago News Cooperative who played a huge role in getting this organization off the ground. When I got into journalism, you had to be a wealthy person like Sam Zell to start a newspaper. We just started a news organization in Chicago with next to nothing.
Moro: How has your experience of editing the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune helped you run a news coop?

O’Shea: My experiences in Chicago and LA taught me to stay focused on what you are trying to do and don't get distracted by criticism and all of the people who like to take shots at you. I also learned the value of great journalism and picking people you can trust. There is no substitute for good people.

Moro: Why and when did you get into journalism?

O’Shea: I became a journalist in 1967 when I was in the U.S. Army. Basically I got into journalism in the Army to get out of the infantry. After the Army, I returned to journalism school at the University of Missouri and got my master's degree. I then went to work at The Des Moines Register in 1971, my first job on a daily.

Moro: Can you say anything about your forthcoming book?

O’Shea: I am working on a narrative about the collapse of the Times Mirror Tribune merger as a microcosm of what happened to the American newspaper. It is an epic tale.

Moro: O.K., I wish you the very best, Jim. And I hope that Chicago News Cooperative will pioneer a new business model for the news industry.
O’Shea: Thank you, Nikhil.

CCJIG Research Paper Call for 2010 Annual Conference

2010-02-22T16:47:00.000-05:00

The Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group (CCJIG) invites research paper submissions for the 2010 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication to be held in Denver on August 4 – 7.

Papers must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on April 1, 2010, in accordance with all requirements of AEJMC and its uniform paper call and electronic submission process. Authors should ensure that their papers do not contain indentifying references. For a detailed explanation, please see “submitting a clean paper” under the uniform paper call on the AEJMC website.

Papers submitted will be eligible for separate faculty and student top paper awards of $151. Because of the separate competition for students, graduate students should be careful to identify themselves as such in the submission process. Papers co-authored with faculty members do not qualify for the student competition.

CCJIG is interested in research that examines the emergence, practice, sustenance and/or teaching of civic/citizen journalism. Authors are urged to submit papers that generally conform to this group’s interests. Papers that examine the use of blogs, for instance, do not automatically meet the group’s interests.

Suggested paper topics include: Citizen/civic journalism in political campaigns, citizen media, civic mapping, community conversations, newsroom projects, legal and ethical issues in civic/citizen journalism, crowdsourcing versus traditional "gatekeeper" journalism, civic/citizen journalism in a multicultural environment, civic/citizen journalism and new technologies, history/philosophy of civic/citizen journalism, the changing newspaper industry economy and its effect on the development of civic/citizen journalism movements, media convergence and civic/citizen journalism, the missions and meanings of "civic journalism" and/or "citizen journalism," teaching civic/citizen journalism, and use of polls, focus groups and other methods in civic reporting.

Special call: CCJIG is also looking for 2010 conference papers that explore and examine the intersections of community journalism, civic, and citizen journalism. One possible area of inquiry, for instance, would be to explore relationships between professional staff members of news organizations and their ‘citizen’ contributors. Papers might explore the differences (or similarities) in tasks, content, attitudes, or training as well as theories, ethical issues, history, and/or other applications that help to explain practices.

CCJIG welcomes submissions for the special call from all AEJMC members.

Please direct any questions to CCJIG Research Chair Glenn Scott (gscott3@elon.edu).

CCJIG at 15: Past, Present, Future

2010-02-20T22:24:00.001-05:00

See CCJIG at 15: Past, Present, Future

Hot Topics in Journalism and Mass Communication, January 2010

Mary Beth Callie
CCJIG chair

Special SPIG call for Denver AEJMC: Social justice journalism in the classroom.

2010-02-20T22:22:00.001-05:00

We teach techniques and technology, law and theory, but how should we handle questions of social justice?

Advocacy for the poor and powerless is nothing new to journalism. Muckrakers and crusaders through the decades have lived by the motto: “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Many of us teach students about America's strong tradition of the alternative press that still thrives today. Additionally, many colleges and universities have social justice as part of their mission.

But what should this mean to journalism educators? How does a commitment to social justice square with journalists’ ideals of fairness, accuracy, impartiality and truth? Here’s a chance to explore. SPIG invites critical essays, qualitative papers, and quantitative research on the issues and questions involved in pursuing justice through the journalism classroom.

We already have a slot reserved for this research panel during the Denver convention – 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5. This is in addition to our regular research showcase at the scholar-to-scholar session.

Submit your papers through the standard All Academic on-line process by April 1. (Details available at: http://aejmc.org/_10call.php) Make sure you use the phrase “social justice” somewhere in the title.

If you have any questions, please contact either of us:

Research Co-Chairs

John Jenks (jjenks@dom.edu)
Teresa Housel (housel@hope.edu)

New book examines 'Public Journalism 2.0'

2010-02-10T15:59:00.003-05:00

Co-editors Jack Rosenberry (St. John Fisher College) and Burton St. John III (Old Dominion University) have published the edited volume Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen-Engaged Press (2010, Routledge).

Across 13 chapters, the book examines both the roots and contemporary dynamics of civic and citizen journalism and posits how public journalism can inform future journalistic endeavors.

In addition to a provocative "state of the practice" piece by Buzz Merritt -- an instrumental founder of the public journalism movement -- the book features original research, case studies and essays by scholars such as Joyce Nip, David Ryfe, Serena Carpenter, Donica Mensing, Sue Robinson and Aaron Barlow. The volume also features interviews with Tanni Haas, Lewis Friedland and Jan Schaffer.

This book can serve as a resource for classes in contemporary journalism practice and theory, especially for exploring how professionals and amateurs can effectively work together to develop a more relevant and citizen-engaged press.

Each chapter also features a summary area that offers, for pedagogical use, key theoretical and practical implications and reflection questions. As summarized by Routledge: "This collection establishes how public journalism principles and practices offers journalists, scholars, and citizens insights into how digital technology and other contemporary practices can increase civic engagement and improve public life."

Big day in Civic Journalism history

2010-02-09T10:11:00.005-05:00

(Disclosure: The author of this post is also a co-author of the work discussed in it.)

On this day in journalism history, Feb. 9, 1990: Knight-Ridder Corp. CEO Jim Batten offers his views on newspapers and community as he is presented with the William Allen White Award by the University of Kansas and the William Allen White Foundation.

* * *

If there is a signalizing moment in the early history of the civic or public journalism movement, Batten’s address deserves consideration for the honor because of the prominence of the person offering the ideas (CEO of a major, well-respected news organization) and the timing, a couple of years into the experimentation that later came to be identified as public journalism.

Batten’s address was published by KU as a booklet, but copies of it have been relatively hard to come by – until now. Partly in honor of its 20th anniversary, the address been re-published (with permission of KU and the White Foundation) in a new book by CCJIG officers Jack Rosenberry and Burton St. John III, titled Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen Engaged Press (Routledge, 2010).

On the one hand, there was no “kick off” moment for the public journalism movement, which grew organically from various experiments – not coincidentally, many of them within Knight-Ridder. But as Rosenberry and St. John write in introducing Batten’s speech as a chapter of the work:

One must be careful about oversubscribing significance to isolated events. For example, it would be inaccurate to say that the environmental movement began with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or that the push for African-American civil rights began with Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit at the back of the bus. Yet these happenings are seen as signal events that inspired people and helped to spread isolated and episodic initiatives into coordinated causes that touched upon concerns of the wider population.

There certainly is no direct line from the post-1988-election experiments in improved civic coverage that were among the first public journalism experiments to Batten’s speech in 1990 to the 600-plus public journalism projects identified by Sandy Nichols and Lew Friedland a few years later. But his talk was without question a blaze along the trail.

While by no means a history, Rosenberry and St. John’s book explores some of public journalism’s past as a way to inform the present evolution of participatory journalism and offer ideas for how it might enhance civic engagement. The title, in fact, is meant as a word play on “2.0” being computer lingo for an upgrade from the original version of a work and the 20th anniversary of the 1990 Batten speech. Along with Batten’s piece, the book consists of a series of contributions by journalism scholars including (in alphabetical order) Aaron Barlow, Serena Carpenter, Cathy DeShano, Lewis A. Friedland, Tanni Haas, Kirsten Johnson, Suzanne McBride, Donica Mensing, Davis “Buzz” Merritt, Kim Nakho, Joyce Nip, Sue Robinson, David Ryfe and Jan Schaffer.

Fall newsletter now available

2009-10-05T20:39:00.002-04:00

Check out CCJIG's fall newsletter, which is no longer printed and mailed but is available as a PDF on the CCJIG Web site.

This issue includes coverage of the 2009 convention in Boston, the panel call for next year's convention in Denver and details about two mid-year events, plus ideas for bringing crowdsourcing into the classroom.

Call for panel proposals for the 2010 AEJMC convention in Denver (due Oct. 15)

2009-09-07T22:09:00.003-04:00

7 September 2009

The Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group (CCJIG) invites proposals for engaging panels for the 2010 AEJMC convention in Denver.

Please email your panel proposal to Co-Vice Chair Deborah Chung (dchung@uky.edu) as a Word attachment by October 15.

Past panels have focused on blogging discourse, credibility of citizen journalism practices, citizen contributions and politics, user collaborative activities, community conversations in hyperlocal media, newsroom projects, practicing civic and citizen journalism in a multicultural environment, and teaching civic and citizen journalism.

Panel proposals for 2010 may address, but are not limited to, the following broad themes:

1. Emerging models and best practices in teaching of civic/citizen journalism
2. Civic/citizen journalism conversations over health care legislation
3. Citizen-sponsored or citizen-involved journalism, particularly focused on environmental, health, and social issues.
4. Media convergence and using new tools to facilitate citizen journalism
5. Local/global practices and perceptions of civic/citizen journalism.

In general, address topics that are relevant to current discussions in journalism, politics, technology, democracy, or philosophy. Panels addressing issues of cultural and racial diversity are encouraged.

Your panel proposal should mention the following components in order: Type (i.e., PF&R, Teaching, Research), a tentative title, a possible moderator, the possible panelists (limit to three so we can work on linking with other interest groups and divisions), a brief description of the panel, possible co-sponsors (divisions or interest groups), and contact information. Also provide speaker demographic and funding estimates (see sample proposal).

Selected proposals are compiled into a single document, with proposals from other divisions and interest groups, in order to be considered for co-sponsorship and scheduling. Many will later be revised or expanded as part of the joint planning process.

A sample proposal is available at http://www.has.vcu.edu/civic-journalism/Sample_Panel_Proposal_09.doc

We look forward to your proposals!

Deborah S. Chung, Ph.D.
dchung@uky.edu
Co-Vice Chair, Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group

How a citizen investigator shook the state's conscience

2009-09-07T15:56:00.017-04:00

This week's New Yorker contains some devastating journalism by staff writer David Grann.

Mr. Grann's is the type of story that must be read by every student of reporting -- and by every deadwood hack who has ever tried to wring poetry from journalism.

It supports my hunch that great journalism is not about mushy platitudes or feel-good prose, but, rather, about exploring -- and with luck, exposing -- jarring truths.

Mr. Grann exposes a particularly jarring truth: How, in an arrest culminating in an execution, the state of Texas failed justice -- failed it systematically via the due processes of trial, appeal, and clemency -- thus realizing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's eerie old fear (expressed via a concurring opinion joined by Anthony Kennedy in Herrara v. Collins (1993)):

[T]he execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.

But the real reason I blog about Mr. Grann's penetrating story is Elizabeth Gilbert of Houston, Texas, the citizen investigator whom he spotlights.

Ms. Gilbert is a friend-of-the-underdog activist whose selfless effort -- even though she ends up buoyed-up by her prisoner subject -- is an example in perseverance, particularly for wannabe citizen journalists.

Check out Ms. Gilbert's tenacious compassion in the must-read story, here. Meanwhile, to Mr. Grann I say, take a bow.

What's the link between virtual discussion, civic engagement?

2009-09-05T10:28:00.002-04:00

DISCLOSURE NOTE: This is a cross-post from my personal blog - JR

Just skimmed over the recent report on The Internet and Civic Engagement from The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project (available here). Interesting stuff about how civic engagement generally and online posting about political issues are correlated. It definitely will require a deeper read.

I'm especially interested to see if it sheds any light on something that I think is a critical, but under-rated, aspect of the whole issue surrounding online civic engagement: the question of causality.

In other words, are people who are just naturally inclined (for whatever reason) to become social/political activists using the Internet as one more tool to communicate, the way earlier generations of activists used newsletters, phone-trees, mailing lists, etc.? Or, does the ability to build communities of interests around specific agendas (political or otherwise) using interactive online communcation really lead people to become engaged in civic matters when they otherwise would not have done so (if the online tools weren't there)?

I've tried to explore some of this in my own research and the evidence I've seen on it is kind of mixed, but leans toward the first of those approaches; i.e., that people tend to be civic activists first. Joining social networks, discussion forums, and the like is just a natural progression for them, building on their innate interests to become involved. Despite the ease and efficiency of becoming "virtually engaged" in civic matters, the Internet isn't creating large-scale civic engagement out of nothing as some of the "cyberutopians" predicted it might back in the early days of its development.

There probably isn't a definitive answer here, and in fact there may be causal influences both ways -- that someone with a mild tendency to be engaged who participates in online civic engagement strengthens that natural tendency, which makes them even more inclined to become more engaged virtually. In other words, a feedback loop develops.

Like I said, it will be interesting to read the Pew report more thoroughly to see if it says anything about these issues. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas about this or suggestions for other research in the area to look at, I would be interested to hear them.

PS: Thank you to CCJIG stalwart Len Witt at PJNet.org for his post about this report, which led me to it.

Town Halls and Civic Journalism

2009-08-16T21:54:00.022-04:00

As news media across the country report on the "August revolt" at Democratic town hall meetings, many don't seem to take a critical look at how the meetings are being conducted, or to offer alternatives.

In Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the News is Not Enough (1998), Davis "Buzz" Merritt, one of the founders of the civic journalism movement, wrote that "[public/civic journalism] moves beyond the limited mission of telling the news to a broader mission of helping public life go well, and out of that imperative. When public life is going well, true deliberation occurs and leads to potential solutions."

From that public perspective, we might ask what types of coverage could help public life go well and facilitate deliberation. Are just the stories of disruption and shouting getting most of the headlines? Do these town hall meetings have ground rules? Are there instances of town hall meeting with basic ground rules and facilitation? What might be the role of the press? What are the alternatives?

First, Slate.com's Explainer answers the question, "do town halls have rules," with a resounding no. Political town halls are generally informal gatherings where constituents can have their voice heard. The process is up to the organizer. Town hall meetings are the descendants of New England "town meetings." Since the 1600s, town governments of New England have held highly regimented meetings for decision-making.

For some instances of town hall meetings on health care reform that had ground rules or different formats, see:

Editorial Board blog at DemocratAndChronicle.com Rochester, NY area
Front page news story in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, "Strong but civil discussion marks health care event," complete with "Speaking Rules" sidebar
Markey to share George Washington's 'Rules of Civility' at meeting, the Coloradoan.com
"Walz and Sebelius find 'Teletownhall' success: a useful health-care discussion without chants, shouts," MinnPost.com

For more insight on consensus building alternatives, see:

"Health Care Reform and a Plea for Civility" column in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Jim Gallaway profiles Mark DeMoss, a Republican Southern Baptist who founded the bipartisan organization, civilityproject.org
Martin Carcasson, director of Colorado State University's Center for Public Deliberation, "Dealing with High Emotion and 'Staged Anger': Tips for Legislators"-- post with analysis and suggestions on the National Center for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv.
Listen to Martin Carcasson and Peter Levine on the NPR/WHYY-FM call-in program, "Radio Times"--podcast
Members of the National Dialogue and Deliberation respond on blogs and more.
New York Times op-ed, "Town Halls by Invitation" by James Fishkin, director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University.
Lawrence Susskind, director of Harvard's Public Disputes program and founder of the Consensus Building Institute points asks: "Would you throw someone with no diplomatic experience into a high-level peace-making situation? I hope not. They'd get eaten alive. Would you throw someone into a red or blue leadership role who had no formal training in negotiation or consensus building? We do it all the time! Legal, political, administrative, or corporate experience is not necessarily consensus-building experience. See "How Should You Respond to the noisy health care reform critics" and "Hey, C'mon why can't Red and Blues agree" on Susskind's blog.

Mary Beth Callie

CCJIG chair, 2009-10

Regis University, Denver

CCJIG's annual report for 2008-09 records significant achievements, key aspirations

2009-07-28T00:57:00.007-04:00

I have placed on file CCJIG's annual report (and demographic profile) (pdf, 293 kb) for 2008-09.

The group's chief achievements for the year:

Membership jumped by about 30 per cent to 116, from 89 a year ago. Of those registered members, 57 were female; six identified themselves as African-American, two as Asian-American, and 12 as International.
CCJIG emerged as AEJMC’s largest interest group (by number of registered members), as announced by Council of Divisions chair Kimberly Bissell at the mid-winter meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, on 6 Dec. 2008.
Entries for the 2009 research paper competition increased 50 per cent to 27 from 18 a year ago, including a record 14 graduate student paper submissions.
An update of CCJIG’s research bibliography was published.
New collaborations (Law & Policy and History; also Harvard University and MIT) were established for convention activities. Old collaborations were maintained (Community Journalism, Media Ethics, Newspaper, Council of Affiliates).
The CCJIG blog, with more than 120 posts, became a primary catalyst of member discussion, meeting a key goal listed in the previous annual report.
An additional 100 or so posts on AEJMC Talk, many of them repeats or elaborations of CCJIG blog posts, exposed the larger AEJMC membership to civic and citizen journalism discussions.
Three newsletters (Fall 2008, Spring 2009, and Summer 2009) were published and circulated inside and outside of the group by newsprint and e-mail, each to about 200 receivers.
As of 30 July 2009, CCJIG's account had a balance of $3766.50.
CCJIG secured a $400 travel grant from AEJMC to fund the 2009 Boston convention travel of a non-member panelist from New York.

The report also lists CCJIG’s goals for the coming year. Some of those goals reflect perceived weaknesses; their order of priority is to be decided by the in-coming officers.

The group's goals for 2009-10:

Facilitate a discussion of CCJIG possibly applying to be an AEJMC Division, in a light of the group's quickly rising membership, the ubiquity of user-generated media, and the burgeoning scholarship of citizen journalism.
Maintain the CCJIG blog as a primary catalyst of member discussion, partly by encouraging blog participation by a cross-section of the membership.
Increase membership of minority and International scholars by 5 per cent overall.
Facilitate two or three Teaching panels in Denver 2010 (in Boston 2009 the group had only one) so that a relative balance may be restored between CCJIG’s Research, Teaching and PF&R activities.
Increase submissions of research papers by 10 per cent (from the 27 papers in Boston 2009) and enhance the quality of scholarship, particularly that related to citizen-journalistic responsibility.
Maintain an updated bibliography, preferably annotated.
Facilitate an increase of 10 per cent in submission of research papers related to (a) newer and rapidly evolving technologies such as Twitter or its progeny, or (b) the impact of new writing styles on citizen-journalistic credibility or responsibility.
Maintain overall acceptance rate of research competition papers at the current 55.55 per cent to par a course set by the Research Committee (known as the "50 per cent guideline").
Publish a teaching compendium to address the curriculum, content and pedagogy areas of the Teaching Committee standards; particular effort may be needed from CCJIG’s teaching standards chair (this will be a goal carried forward from 2007-08).
Organize a symposium or other meeting, online or offline, to mark the 20th anniversary – in 2010 – of James Batten's 1990 address that was a bellwether in the citizen journalism movement (this will be a goal modified and carried forward from 2007-08).
Continue the top paper awards. (Re-institution of the two $151 "best paper" awards in 2008 may explain part of the 50 per cent jump in paper submissions for Boston 2009).

I wish to record my deep appreciation for the devoted service to our group in 2008-09 by fellow officers Mary Beth Callie, Deborah Chung, Burton St. John, Kirsten A. Johnson, Glenn Scott, Jeff South, Serena Carpenter and Clyde Bentley.

Enhancing credibility, citizen journalism's next great challenge

2009-07-27T21:15:00.017-04:00

(Strip courtesy of Scott Adams, 7 Nov. 2004)

What follows is a tweaked version of my piece appearing in the Summer 2009 issue of CCJIG's newsletter (pdf, 364 kb).

Would news audiences accept Jane Doe, the citizen journalist, better if she gained in credibility? Or would she become more credible upon being better accepted?

It’s a causality dilemma that weighs rather comfortably on my mind.

As audiences suffer fewer mainstream choices (due to consolidation of electronic media businesses and closures of newspaper), citizen journalists are emerging as primary catalysts of public affairs deliberations. From theater scans to war analyses and from niche reporting to bailout commentary, non-professionals are provoking our latent intellect, stirring our public empathy, and fragmenting our raw emotion, like never before.

Clearly, Ms. Doe, with her digital camera and URL, is transforming from obscure squeaker to keynote speaker. But is the marketplace of ideas better for it? I sure would like to know.

What I do know is that the citizen reporter is no stopgap expediency. She is here to stay.

In figuring out Ms. Doe's long-haul impact on journalism, I am reminded of one of history’s great lessons: If nothing else, every new technology has managed to transform the credibility in communication.

The Chinese invention of paper about 1900 years ago enabled writing for the record.

Five and a half centuries after that, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable-type printing transformed European handbills into regime-changing newspapers.

Fast forward another 450 years: Guglielmo Marconi's founding of wireless telegraphy birthed the great medium of radio and then, only some 30 years later, Vladimir Zworykin’s electron scanning tube grew into television.

Eventually in 1970, Robert Maurer et al.’s invention of optic-fiber cable enabled massive telecom networks, and finally RAND Corp.’s Internet spawned a decentralized multitude of blogs.

Generally, it seems that newer the technology the smaller was its gestation period -- and the quicker it gained in credibility.

So what, specifically, is credibility? Perhaps B.J. Fogg of Stanford should answer that one. For citizen journalists, I would suggest credibility is a longitudinal concept -- perceived over time -- which enfolds unfailing attribution to sources, transparency in newsgathering, fair commentary, a 180-degree pan, much narrative detail, and of course logical argument.

The history indicates that we may expect blogs, tweets, iReports and other such technology to get rapidly more credible as it squeezes into the intellectual space historically engaged by legacy professionals.

Amra Tareen of AllVoices is already offering cash incentives for the best Ms. Does because “citizen journalism only works if the content is high quality.” Arianna Huffington of HuffPo is exploring a “distinction between saving journalism and saving newspapers.”

The New York Times and Boston Globe have collaborated with a personalizable content reader intriguingly named Kindle DX (for “deluxe”), and Fox-owned WJBK is hoping to replace the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News as they transition from daily home delivery to thrice a week in order to survive.

Regardless of business model – using donations (spot.us), using volunteers (chitowndailynews.org), going nonprofit (voiceofsandiego.org) or aggregating (everyblock.com) – there can be no doubt that citizen journalism’s next great challenge is to enhance its own credibility.

I am watching, and I think so is everyone else at the Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

Also read: iReport vandals spotlight a challenge
And: AllVoices pioneers credibility ratings for citizen reports
And: "I want collective intelligence, but I also want sound journalism"
And: Journalism comes full circle with civic/citizen movement

Citizen journalism arrives in Zimbabwe

2009-07-27T20:53:00.004-04:00

Zimbabwe's 3MG Media group, which publishes four online newspapers, has opened its servers to citizen journalists.

Why? So that, the group says, "our readers will become an integral part of our news gathering efforts."

It will give Zimbabweans an opportunity to interact and participate in information and events that shape their daily lives.

If you live in Zimbabwe, or feel Zimbabwean, you may write to citizen@3mgmedia.ca for more information.

"For healthy media, half of income should come from subscriptions"

2009-07-27T20:09:00.006-04:00

OhmyNews founder-CEO Oh Yeon-ho is a robust frontiersman of tech Korea. And here is his theory of health:

"For a news media to remain healthy, it will have to earn at least 50% of its income from the sales of content or paid subscriptions. Despite our best effort, OhmyNews still relies on advertisers for more than 70% of its revenue," Oh said.

He added that if 100,000 readers joined the venture contributing KRW 10,000 a month, OhmyNews would be able to survive without relying on advertising revenues.

Buy why only online start-ups? Pay-ever-more-for-content may be good strategy -- nay, an inescapable reality -- for traditional media too. Consider this: In the first quarter of 2009, newspaper advertising plummeted almost 30 per cent, magazine advertising revenue fell more than 20 per cent, and broadcast television revenue slipped nearly 12 per cent.

Also read: "Stop giving away content via Web, Walter Isaacson advises media"
And: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?
And: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?
Finally: "A sustainable model emerges"

"Charity and volunteering are O.K., but news still needs a business model"

2009-07-27T15:58:00.008-04:00

With more and more newspapers, including the venerated New York Times, considering or receiving charity, CUNY don Jeff Jarvis wonders if "the tin cup [is to] be the sole support of journalism" in any "new ecosystem of news."

Mr. Jarvis then answers the question.

But in that ecosystem, gifts of money and effort will have their place. Except I prefer not to look at this as charity. That assumes the newspaper produces, owns and controls the asset that is the news. If, instead, we define news as the province of a larger ecosystem of which a newspaper - or its successor news organisation - is merely a member, then help no longer looks like charity. It looks like collaboration.

Check out his blog post here.

Citizen journalism workshop in Detroit area

2009-07-27T15:17:00.005-04:00

If you live in a northern suburb of Detroit and would like to be a citizen journalist, read on.

The Journal Register Company-owned Independent Newspapers, Inc., plans to offer a three-hour workshop for budding citizen journalists.

To be held in New Baltimore, Michigan (just north of Lake St. Clair), the workshop will be free of cost to participants, and held in the premises of The Voice Newspapers at 51180 Bedford St., New Baltimore, MI 48047.

Residents of Macomb county and around may contact workshop organizer Jeff Payne at 586-716-8100 (ext. 304) to register. In a brief telephone conversation, Mr. Payne said the date and time of the workshop would be decided based on the number and preferences of the participants.

INI's site indicates that the company publishes more than two dozen community newspapers in four states.

iReport vandals spotlight a challenge

2009-07-27T14:47:00.008-04:00

It seems the rosier the apples, the closer one must look.

Consider this story about iReport, a poster child of mainstream media's dalliance with citizen journalism.

CNN's iReport citizen journalism site was vandalized again last night with a false report claiming that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was "found dead in his multimillion dollar beachfront mansion" after a coke binge with "male dancers everywhere."

It's likely the work of 4chan message board goons, upset over a report that AT&T was blocking the site for its broadband customers. . . .

[The false story] highlights the risk of high-profile news organizations like CNN running citizen journalism sites.

More here.

So what got those apples bad? Was it the boorishness of a big corporation? Regardless , can citizen journalism always expect succor in a marketplace of ideas? Or is there need for a regulator within? These questions may, in themselves, contain the vandals' unintended lessons.

Visit the Christian Science Monitor during AEJMC convention

2009-07-21T09:08:00.003-04:00

Note: This event was a late addition to the Newspaper Division lineup, so details do not appear in the division's convention preview LeadTime newsletter and will not be in the formal convention program. It developed from an invitation from the Monitor to AEJMC members that arrived after the deadline for both publications.
For additional information or to RSVP, contact Newspaper Division Head Jack Rosenberry via e-mail: jrosenberry [at] sjfc.edu.

The Christian Science Monitor:
After 100 years, a radically new future

Representatives of the Christian Science Monitor will discuss its shift from daily print to Web-first journalism in a special event taking place during the AEJMC convention in Boston.

The meeting in the Monitor building, which is just across the street from the convention hotel, will take place 4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday Aug. 5. Reservations are required by Friday July 31 so that Monitor officials can be told how many to expect. To RSVP, contact Newspaper Division Chair Jack Rosenberry via e-mail: jrosenberry [at] sjfc.edu.

This will be an opportunity to learn about a respected journalistic institution, rub elbows with colleagues, and visit a landmark Boston address. Light refreshments will be served.

The event will include a tour of the Monitor’s newsroom and talk about how editors and managers view its groundbreaking shift from daily print to Web-first journalism while continuing their commitment to international and national news coverage. Participants will be able to get their take on how well the new three-pronged publishing strategy is working and what the reader reaction has been to the mix of daily online news coverage, a weekly print magazine, and an e-mailed subscription news briefing.

It will begin in the “Quotes” Café in the Christian Science Publishing Society lobby. This building, which houses the Monitor’s newsroom, is part of Church Center plaza, across the street from the Sheraton Boston hotel. To enter the building, walk along the reflecting pool and make a diagonal right turn at the corner of the church. As you near Massachusetts Avenue the main entrance is on the right, just past the entrance designated as the Monitor’s.

-30-

Comment deadline for Public Journalism 2.0 extended

2009-05-18T08:12:00.002-04:00

We have had a request to extend the time to comment about the interviews for our book Public Journalism 2.0 by a few days. (See May 8 posting below for details). We therefore are setting a new deadline of May 25. Thank you to those who have contributed, and we hope this extension will elicit a little more involvement from the civic-citizen journalism community.

"A cautionary tale with great photos"

2009-05-13T10:00:00.005-04:00

Photographer Stephen Mallon was hired for an adventure in January -- to take close-ups of the salvage of U.S. Air Flight 1549 from the freezing Hudson.

On the Nieman blog Tim Windsor dubs Matthew Schechmeister's report "a cautionary tale with great photos."

Interesting.

Also see: "There's a plane in the Hudson"

"Opinion does not make citizen journalism"

2009-05-13T09:52:00.003-04:00

Matthew Negrin of the New Hampshire Union Leader:

[J]ournalists are paid to inform the community.

So when people talk about citizen journalism replacing old-school journalism, I'm not exactly sure what they mean. Do they mean more people adding their opinions about community affairs? Do they mean more people reporting actual news by digging for secrets? Or do they just mean more blogging? It would be really great if some smart, aspiring citizen journalists could outline what exactly they plan to do to further the discussion of news instead of simply reducing it to personal opinion.

More here.

Research project on civic-citizen journalism puts theory into practice

2009-05-08T10:09:00.002-04:00

In planning for our book "Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen Engaged Press," (due out from Routledge early in 2010) we thought it would be interesting and appropriate to use some of the techniques of online participatory journalism in exploring the practice. If we're shifting to an era when "news is a conversation," then why not apply the same principle to research about the process?

To that end, we developed the idea of a chapter for each unit of the book called "Open Source," featuring interviews with experts in civic journalism about their thoughts on the field's evolution. The name "Open Source" came from the idea that not only the authors but the other contributors would supply interview questions, and also from the idea that comments about the completed interviews would be part of the final publication.

Well, the interviews have been done with with three individuals whose names should be recognizable to anyone familiar with civic and citizen journalism: Lewis Friedland of the University of Wisconsin, Tanni Haas of City College of New York and Jan Schaffer of J-Lab at American University. Lew was interviewed by telephone and Jan and Tanni replied in writing to a series of questions. And now comes the "open source" comment part of it: We have posted the interviews on a blog and hope to collect comments that will be incorporated into the published version of the book.

If you are interested in looking at and perhaps even commenting on these interviews, the blog with the transcripts and comment areas can be found at http://publicjournalismbook.blogspot.com. (You will need a free Blogspot account to make comments. If you don't have one, information about obtaining one can be found at the blog site.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please recognize that by making a comment you are authorizing its inclusion in the published book, and also be aware that we reserve the right to edit for clarity and space. Anonymous comments will be rejected.

We are hoping to wrap up this portion of the project by May 15, so the comments will be available until then. The questions developed with the help of our contributors are interesting, and the answers provided by Lew, Jan and Tanni are informative and illuminating. Please take a few minutes to check them out and add your voice to the conversation.

Jack Rosenberry
Burton St. John III
(If you have any questions, use e-mail link with our names at the right)

Murdoch's newspaper sites will begin to charge users in a year

2009-05-07T14:22:00.009-04:00

Rupert Murdoch, the would-be media plutocrat of $4 billion net worth, seems to be leading his media properties via two emerging strategies.

One, use citizen journalism when possible. Two, start to charge for Web content.

Breaking news all over again, via CNN today.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.

Murdoch's newspaper properties include the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the New York Post (all in the United States), the Times and the Sun (both in the United Kingdom), and the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and the Australian (all down under).

The Wall Street Journal already charges $79 per year for much of its Web content -- it did so even before Murdoch's News Corporation purchased it in August of 2007. But the Journal is still available for free via the iPhone and BlackBerry -- which doesn't please Mr. Murdoch at all.

Also see: Stop giving away content via Web, Walter Isaacson advises media
And: Fox News launches citizen journalism site
And: Mainstream media sites increasingly welcome citizen participation
And: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: MySpace starts its own citizen journalism forum
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

New Kindle promises to kindle new cravings

2009-05-06T19:31:00.013-04:00

Today in New York Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos launched the 9.7-inch-screen Kindle DX (for "deluxe"), the latest of the portable, personalizable content readers.

College students are clearly a target market.

Other than the increased size, the biggest improvement in the Kindle ecosystem is the deal with textbook publishers. The textbook market will be key for the DX to succeed. Amazon has already signed up three of the top five textbook publishers (Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley) as well as 27 University Press Publishers. The Kindle DX will be used in trials with at least five universities this fall.

So are digital newspaper aficionados. The New York Times reports:

Amazon also said that three newspapers, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, would offer a reduced price on the Kindle in exchange for a long-term subscription, but only for people who live in areas where their paper editions are not available. Amazon and the newspapers described it as a pilot program.

Meanwhile, Mark Glaser is at a symposium at the University of Missouri where "a group of newspapers and tech folks . . . are looking at how newspaper content might work on various e-readers like the Amazon Kindle."

Economics of delivering a newspaper on Kindle:

> Avg. file size = 1.2MB
> Bandwidth cost = .12 cents MB
> Selling price = $13.99 month
> Monthly bandwidth cost = $4.32
That eats into monthly cost of serving content into Kindle. So Amazon is probably losing money on some of the lower cost publications it sells. This cost doesn't even include advertising in the mix.

Mr. Glaser has a blog post about "the next generation of e-readers." Check it out. It's good stuff.

Also see: Could Kindle 2 save the newspapers?
And: Huffington counsels old media: Monetize links, don't try to sell exclusive content
And: What will the future newspaper look like?

Huffington counsels old media: Monetize links, don't try to sell exclusive content

2009-05-06T18:50:00.010-04:00

Arianna Huffington, goddess of the Huffington Post, has called for "a distinction between saving journalism and saving newspapers."

Today we live in the linked economy, not a walled-off content economy. The challenge is to find different ways to monetize links among media through advertising or micropayment or whatever, not subscription for exclusive content. In this environment, good journalism will survive, and even flourish, though most newspapers--except for a handful of the very best papers and magazines in every national market -- probably will not. There will be more bottom up, citizen journalism, which is great.

For more check out this interview in the German weekly Die Welt.

Image courtesy of Gawker.com

Also see: Huffington Post's checklist of "citizen journalism publishing standards"
And: Newspaper layoffs zoom
And: Could Kindle 2 save the newspapers?
And: The one business Warren Buffett will not buy "at any price"
And: Fox launches a conservative counter to HuffPo
Finally: Walter Isaacson advises media to stop giving away content via Web

AllVoices giving cash incentives for high quality citizen journalism

2009-05-06T17:46:00.010-04:00

Because "citizen journalism only works if the content is high quality," AllVoices is offering cash incentives until the end of the year.

Citizens, aspiring journalists, writers, bloggers, students, photographers and videographers from around the world . . . will be rewarded based on the quality of their submissions, response from the community and strength of their brand . . . in the following three categories:

Stringer
First time or infrequent contributors in the process of building a social network based around their news. Stringers have tremendous potential to build their brand and make money by leveraging the Allvoices platform.
• Per 1,000 page views: $0.25
• Quality: No copyright violations (text or photos)
• Audience: Minimum of 10,000 views and 25 fans

Reporter
Reporters generate a lot of attention to their contributions. People in their Allvoices social network respect a Reporter’s opinion and content.
• Per 1,000 page views: $1.00
• Quality: No copyright violations (text or photos)
• Audience: Minimum of 25,000 views and 50 fans

Anchor
Anchors are contributors who have a tremendous following within the Allvoices community. Anchors exert influence beyond their social network, and their work is closely followed.
• Per 1,000 page views: $2.00
• Quality: No copyright violations (text or photos)
• Audience: Minimum of 100,000 views and 75 fans

More here.

Also see: AllVoices now accepts citizen contributions via SMS
And: AllVoices pioneers credibility ratings
And: AllVoices claims a leap in popularity

CCJIG bib updated with three dozen new titles

2009-05-06T10:59:00.016-04:00

Consider your summer reading list ready.

Sue Ellen Christian, our group's veritable bibliographer, has updated her May 2008 listing with more than three dozen newly published titles relevant to public/participatory journalism.

The update, starting page 12, is available here (pdf, 85.3 kb).

On behalf of CCJIG I thank Sue Ellen for her generous effort given the many demands on her time.

Local TV stations are eager to step into closing newspapers' shoes

2009-05-05T19:07:00.009-04:00

Closure of a newspaper means broadcasters in that market no longer have a traditional source of story ideas for later-in-the-day newscasts.

Hofstra University's journalism chair and former television journalist Bob Papper has been quoted to say, “There are any number of markets where newspapers don't set the news agenda.”

Instead, local television stations are stepping over one another to fill the newspapers' shoes.

Broadcasting & Cable deputy editor Michael Malone writes that Detroit's Fox-owned-and-operated WJBK station is sending out a 6 a.m. e-newsletter to inboxes hoping to replace the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, both which have gone from daily home delivery to thrice a week.

As newspapers continue to ring up giant losses—Gannett, for one, saw its publishing revenue plummet 27% in the first quarter—it's the perfect time for stations to grab market share from their beleaguered print brethren. Some station sales staffs have been working local papers' demise into their sales pitches. . . .
“It's early to forecast, but we're already experiencing a revenue increase in broadcast,” says [WJBK general manager Jeff] Murri of Detroit's newspaper retrenchment. Retail outlets that relied on papers to promote date-specific sales, he says, still need to get the word out in a timely fashion.

Some CBS-owned stations have reorganized their creative services departments to help lure advertisers from newspapers. The departments pre-produce commercials featuring a potential advertiser to show the client how its goods look on television. “With newspapers shrinking, it's a good time to dig deeper in terms of where you get your accounts,” says WCBS New York President/General Manager Peter Dunn. “It's really helped us a lot.”

More here.

Also see: Detroit's newspapers cut home delivery from daily to thrice a week
And: Broadcast stations enlist college students as citizen reporters
And: Indian TV station offers prizes to citizen journalists for "news reality" programming

Four business models take root as online news goes hyperlocal

2009-05-05T11:46:00.006-04:00

CNN producer John D. Sutter identifies four business models for online news to go hyperlocal -- by using donations from readers, by using volunteers, by going nonprofit, and by aggregating.

In order, he cities as examples Spot.us, ChiTownDailyNews.org, VoiceofSanDiego.org, and EveryBlock.com.

Mr. Sutter is hopeful as he discusses the future of hyperlocal journalism.

[T]he people who run hyperlocal Web sites say they are optimistic about the future of the news business. They say they won't be able to replace all that's being lost as large news companies crumble but say they are excited about the fact that they're able to offer something new -- at least for the moment.

Check out the story.

Also see: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists
And: "Hyperlocal Web journalism meets civic, intellectual and social needs"
And: Mainstream media sites increasingly welcome citizen participation
And: Community blogs, "a new breed of watchdog"
And: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: SPJ partners with Helium to champion citizen journalism
And: Citizen journalism is "all baloney," says Indian editor
Finally: Asia's social media use zooms

Newspaper layoffs zoom; more than 70 jobs lost every day

2009-05-05T11:17:00.015-04:00

This year American newspapers are shedding jobs one-and-a-half times faster than they did in 2008.

Paper Cuts records that so far in 2009, nearly 8900 jobs have been lost to layoffs or buyouts -- that is more than 70 jobs per day.

In 2008, a total of nearly 16000 jobs were lost. In the latter half of 2007, 2112 were lost.

The rate has been unerringly incremental, and a ceiling is not in sight.

Summing up, since June of 2007 America's newspapers have shed about 27000 jobs.

A consolation, if at all, is that some other businesses are doing decidedly worse. For example in the first quarter of 2009 America's technology sector (much bigger than newspapers to begin with) shed more than 84000 jobs.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that at the end of March 2009 newspaper circulations were on average 7 per cent lower than a year ago.

Meanwhile here's what a co-founder of the Huffington Post, Kenneth Lerer, said at the Columbia Journalism School:

“The future of journalism is not dependent upon the future of newspapers.” He suggested that newspapers and magazines had failed to adapt because they were imprisoned by their own success . . .

Also see: Could Kindle 2 save the newspapers?
And: The one business Warren Buffett will not buy "at any price"

Could Kindle 2 save the newspapers?

2009-05-04T17:17:00.012-04:00

In a couple of days Amazon will launch a new big-screen ("reads like paper") Kindle 2 operating on an automatic 3G network.

Amazon offers Kindle subscriptions of 58 periodicals including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the New York Times.

Putting two and two together, Brad Stone of the New York Times wonders if the Kindle might turn out to be a knight in digital armor. Perhaps it could save newspapers. Perhaps newspapers could use the Kindle to

"hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads."

More here.

Picture courtesy of RedOrbit

Also see: The one American business Buffett won't buy "any any price"
And: Journalism's future may lie in multimedia
And: Scholars call for tax credit for buying newspapers
And: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?
And: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists
And finally: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?

The one American business Warren Buffett will not buy "at any price"

2009-05-04T16:46:00.007-04:00

As a 13-year-old in 1943, one of Warren Buffett's first jobs was to deliver newspapers.

Thirty years later, the Warren Buffet-owned Omaha Sun became the first weekly ever to win a Pulitzer.

Today, what is the one American business Mr. Buffett says he will not buy "at any price"? Newspapers.

[Mr. Buffett's] view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price," he said. "They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."
As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers, he said. But news is now available in many other venues, he said.

More Mr. Buffet at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

Image courtesy of BusinessWeek

Also read: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists
And: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?
And: Newspapers' closure adversely affects political engagement, study finds
And: Newspapers, a pillar of civic journalism
And: Scholars call for tax credit for buying newspapers
And finally: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?

Indian editor says citizen journalism is "all baloney"

2009-05-02T23:50:00.013-04:00

Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, has scoffed at citizen journalism as "all baloney."

"Show me a citizen lawyer or a citizen doctor and I'll show you citizen journalists."

Instead, Mr. Gupta says, a "golden age" would dawn for India's legacy media thanks to a younger crop of "competent, digitally-savvy journalists" who valued "accuracy, fairness, and credibility."

Mr. Gupta, who is popular for hosting a quirky televised interview show in which he strolls outdoors with his interviewee, was addressing convoking students of the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media in Bangalore on Saturday.

Find a report here.

Picture courtesy of paidcontent.org

Update 05/04/09: Not exactly "citizen lawyer/doctor" but CNN today runs a story on the growing tribe of "citizen scientists"

Also see: Asia's social media use zooms
And: Can citizen journalism restore a sense of autonomy?
And: Criminal charge slapped on Orkut activist in India
And: Some thoughts on citizen journalism and Mumbai
And: Community blogs, "a new breed of watchdog"
And: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: Hyperlocal Web journalism meets "civic, intellectual and social needs"
Finally (*phew!*): A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

"Newspapers are the principal pillar of civic journalism"

2009-05-02T18:39:00.009-04:00

Ian E. Wilson, the recently retired Librarian and Archivist of Canada, tells Randy Boswell of Canwest News Service that there is

something more in reading a newspaper -- with the stories juxtaposed piece by piece on a page. It's not just the headline, it's the ad, it's the comic strip, it's the news, it's the analysis, it's the coming events. It's the totality of that -- seeing the whole community.

Mr. Wilson has an opinion about blogs vis-à-vis civic journalism.

"Good journalism is essential, fundamental to any society, and we can't expect it's going to happen through blogs," [Mr. Wilson] says.
Wilson sees newspapers as the principal pillar of civic journalism, the wellspring of news and influence and opinion-shaping for all other information purveyors. "The kind of investigative, background material" found in newspapers, says Wilson, along with agenda-setting, enterprise reporting and "analysis and interpretation providing context to today's news is, I think, a role that absolutely must continue."

More here.

Picture courtesy of Jean Levac

Also see: Civic journalism as CCJIG defines it

"10 worst countries to be a blogger"

2009-05-02T18:00:00.009-04:00

The New York headquartered Committee to Protect Journalists has posted a list of the "10 worst countries to be a blogger."

Feel free to check out the list. Feel free to feel outraged. Feel free to feel helpless.

So how did CPJ pick the ten from the world's 195 independent countries?

METHODOLOGY
In consultation with Internet experts, CPJ developed eight questions to assess blogging conditions worldwide. The questions:

Does a country jail bloggers?
Do bloggers face harassment, cyber-attacks, threats, assaults, or other reprisals?
Do bloggers self-censor to protect themselves?
Does the government limit connectivity or restrict access to the Internet?
Are bloggers required to register with the government or an ISP and give a verifiable name and address before blogging?
Does a country have regulations or laws that can be used to censor bloggers?
Does the government monitor citizens who use the Internet?
Does the government use filtering technology to block or censor the Internet?

Based on these criteria, CPJ regional experts nominated countries for this list. The final ranking was determined by a poll of CPJ staff and outside experts.

The "worst" list here.

Also read: Pew study contrasts blogs v. legacy media sites v. citizen sites
And: Community blogs, "a new breed of watchdog"
And: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: Hyperlocal Web journalism meets "civic, intellectual and social needs"
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

Press freedom in dire straits the world over, U.N. expresses concern for journalists

2009-05-02T15:33:00.019-04:00

Sunday May 3 is World Press Freedom Day.

Only 17 per cent of the world's population lives with a press completely free of government/party control.

According to a Freedom House survey released today, the times grew tougher for press freedom across the world in 2008 for a seventh year in a row.

The muzzling of the press is "particularly worrisome" in countries of "East Asia, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa."

The worst rated countries continue to include Burma, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea and Turkmenistan. In the Americas, 2008 saw a downward spiral of press freedom in Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Of 195 countries/territories surveyed,

70 (36 percent) are rated Free, 61 (31 percent) are rated Partly Free and 64 (33 percent) are rated Not Free. This represents a modest decline from the 2008 survey in which 72 countries and territories were Free, 59 Partly Free and 64 Not Free.

Must-see details here.

In response, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon spoke (via an aide) in concern for journalists in New York today.

[A]ttacks on journalists remain shockingly high in number and . . . murder and detention are only the most blatant ways that journalists are silenced. Often . . . fear leads journalists to censor themselves. . . . [S]ome Governments are suppressing Internet access and the work of Internet-based journalists and others using the “new media”. . . .

Let us renew our resolve to protect their freedom and safety . . . and . . . proclaim again our commitment to free and independent media as an essential agent of human rights, development and peace.

How many journalists were killed in harness? 41 in 2008, according to the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists. And 11 in 2009 so far.

According to the CPJ "some 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers," to which Mr. Ban said,

I urge all governments to respect the rights of these citizen journalists, who may lack the legal resources or political connections that might assist them in gaining their freedom.

But there's a silver lining, as always. While the Freedom House study records "twice as many losses [for press freedom] as gains in 2008, with declines and stagnation in East Asia of particular concern" it also reports some regions have made good on their history.

The Maldives made the study's largest jump, moving to the Partly Free category with the adoption of a new constitution protecting freedom of expression and the release of a prominent journalist from life imprisonment. Guyana regained its Free rating with fewer attacks on journalists and a government decision to lift a boycott on advertising in the main independent newspaper.

Ban Ki-Moon portrait courtesy of the United Nations

Also see: "Public journalism has created an extra-press authority"
And: Criminal charge slapped on Orkut activist in India
And: Asia's social media use zooms
And: Can citizen journalism restore a sense of autonomy?
And: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists
And finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

Can watchdog Netizens bark or bite outside of the Internet?

2009-05-01T20:30:00.010-04:00

Some twelve years ago Ronda Hauben and son Michael co-wrote a pathbreaking book which introduced the notional "Netizen."

Today Ms. Hauben has posted a thought-provoking comment, culled from a 2008 lecture based on the book, at the pioneering citizen journalism site OhMyNews. Check it out.

[Michael] Hauben explained that those in government will abuse their power if they are allowed to do so. He proposed that "people need to keep a watch over those in government in order to make sure they are working in the interests of the many."

The question raised, then, is whether the Net and Netizen are able to have an impact on the offline world, on the power of government and of the mainstream media.

More here.

Picture courtesy of cnii.com.cn

Also see: "Hyperlocal Web journalism meets civic, intellectual and social needs"
And: Mainstream media sites increasingly welcome citizen participation
And: Community blogs, "a new breed of watchdog"
And: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

Pew study contrasts citizen sites v. blogs v. sites tied to legacy media

2009-04-30T21:04:00.015-04:00

Pew's State of the News Media 2009 survey examines, among other things, "363 journalism sites in 46 markets (145 citizen journalism sites and 218 tied to commercial media)."

Led by professors Margaret Duffy, Esther Thorson, Stephen Lacy and Daniel Riffe the study compares citizen news blogs, citizen news sites, and sites tied to legacy media.

It finds

[C]lear differences between citizen blogs that primarily offer commentary (along with links to already reported information) and a new array of citizen news sites that also do original reporting. The broader citizen news sites were more interactive, more transparent and more likely to use citizen content. Blogs, while easy to create and set up, were much more limited and less open. Even legacy media now surpass blogs in many of the characteristics that citizen media were once supposed to represent.

Among the findings:

Blogs were the least the likely to allow citizens to contribute — even to post comments or e-mail the site. The leaders in such interactivity were citizen news sites.

Legacy media excelled in creating innovative ways for people to download or receive content.

Legacy sites were also the most transparent about their policies and expectations for users.

One area where legacy media trailed both citizen blogs and news sites was in providing links within their news stories to outside material. Legacy sites were more than twice as likely as citizen sites to offer no links to outside material.

On the other hand, the citizen sites linked to legacy news sites twice as often as legacy sites linked to citizen sites, with the citizen sites using the legacy sites as their “news” source.

The nature of the content on the three types of sites varied fairly sharply. Legacy sites provided the greatest percent of news (89%), close to double that of citizen news sites (56%), and three times that of blog content (27%).

More here.

Wordcloud courtesy of Alfred Hermida

Also see: "I'll believe in the triumph of citizen journalism when I see it"

Citizen journalism workshop in Bangalore on May 9

2009-04-30T20:24:00.010-04:00

On Saturday May 9 Citizen Matters, the Web magazine published with open source software in Bangalore, India, will host a three-hour workshop "to help citizen journalists understand what it takes to do credible reporting."

[The workshop] is for the part-time blogger who wants to sharpen his skills or for any civic-minded person with a hankering to contribute to a website or media outlet. By the end of the session, the participant will have a better sense of what it takes to produce good journalism.

Kanchan Kaur, vice dean of the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, and Ralph Frammolino, award-winning reporter formerly of the Los Angeles Times, will conduct the workshop.

Details here.

Also see: Some thoughts on citizen journalism and Mumbai
And: Criminal charge against Orkut activist frays freedom of expression in India

"Newspapers will not be replaced by any single model"

2009-04-30T20:06:00.006-04:00

Will newspapers be run out of existence by online news sites?

Sarah de Crescenzo, student reporter at the University of California San Diego's Guardian, writes if they are, "[W]e need to make sure we don’t discard journalism along with them."

In choosing a new business model, you should ask yourself why journalism exists in the first place.

Read her why here.

Also see: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists
And: Dan Gillmor: Be skeptical of everything, but not equally
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

Can citizen journalism unshackle us from structure, restore a sense of autonomy?

2009-04-30T10:55:00.016-04:00

I am reading Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain's book titled The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it (Yale University Press, 2008; download free via Creative Commons).

Strange. It is making me think of citizen journalism.

Mr. Zittrain narrates on pages 127-28:

The Dutch city of Drachten has undertaken an unusual experiment in traffic management. The roads serving forty-five thousand people are "verkeersbordvrij": free of nearly all road signs. Drachten is one of several European test sites for a traffic planning approach called "unsafe is safe." The city has removed its traffic signs, parking meters, and even parking spaces. The only rules are that drivers should yeild to those on their right at an intersection, and that parked cars blocking others will be towed.

The result so far is counterintuitive: a dramatic improvement in vehicular safety. Without signs to obey mechanically (or, as studies have shown, disobey seventy percent of the time), people are forced to drive more mindfully -- operating their cars with more care and attention to the surrounding circumstances. They communicate more with pedestrians, bicyclists, and other drivers using hand signals and eye contact. They see other drivers rather than other cars . . . "The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles."

It's a fine argument.

I am no anarchist but I can see that the nature of rules is to preclude the individual's thoughtfulness of others. The presumption of disorder questions the individual's inherent chivalry; consequently, it can drain social capital.

Similarly, the alphabet restricts our thinking to our command of it, the structure of news reporting impedes our free appreciation of an event, and so on.

My point is that in this context, citizen journalism offers a whiff of fresh air.

Perhaps the unrestricted, market-oriented offerings of citizen journalists will free the individual of the straitjacket of standardization in journalistic practice.

Perhaps the unrestricted, market-oriented offerings of citizen journalists will help the individual recover a measure of libertarian autonomy.

Perhaps.

So is citizen journalism some sort of panacea? Hardly. To quote Mr. Zittrain again (p. 216):

The constraints . . . [will] now come not only from the well-organized governments or firms of Privacy 1.0, but from a few people generatively drawing upon the labors of many to greatly impact rights otherwise guaranteed by a legal system.

Also see: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists
And: Dan Gillmor: Be skeptical of everything, but not equally
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

Dan Gillmor: Be skeptical of everything, but not equally skeptical of everything

2009-04-29T20:58:00.015-04:00

Oracles don't have to be mystics, or sport white beards, or live in Greece. They can be clean shaven, courtly and live in Arizona.

To the oldest of the inane questions, "Is blogging journalism?," Dan Gillmor, the veritable oracle of citizen journalism, responds:

"Oh, God, I can't wait for the day when that question disappears from the world, because it's just such the wrong question," he says. "Some blogging is journalism, most is not. Let's move on to something more interesting." . . .

"The question we should be asking is, what is journalism?"

In Gillmor's view, journalism is defined by certain principles. Among them: skepticism, accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, transparency, independence and keeping an open mind. He believes we should replace the old, impossible notion of "objectivity" with informed, critical judgment. And journalists should treat the process as a conversation, not a lecture. That means listening to more than the official sources.

How to enhance the quality of journalism? Mr. Gillmor places the onus on news consumers.

We've got the supply side pretty well covered. There are all kinds of media being created. Certainly there are lots of problems, but lots of opportunities, and it's pretty exciting what's going on.

One of the places we're really lagging is the demand side. All the supply in the world won't matter if people don't demand something better than they're getting. People who've been consumers of media have to become activists in their consumption. They can't just be passive consumers, because the result is the generally crappy state of journalism that we have today in all respects. . . .

I haven't stopped caring about helping people do good journalism, whether it's traditional or citizen or whatever you want to call it. But if we don't turn the consumers of media into active or activist-type consumers, which means in part taking actual responsibility for what we read as opposed to just letting it show up and not being satisfied, people will be missing something that citizenship should include, which is to be active in how you get your information.

Mr. Gillmor pulls no punches.

Check out the good interview with Fiona Morgan of the Independent, published from North Carolina's Triangle.

Image courtesy of Jeff Risley

Also see: Citizen journalism will complement "public media 2.0," says white paper
And: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists
And: Citizen journalism welcome but must be edited, says Scripps publisher
Finally: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists