Enhancing credibility, citizen journalism's next great challenge

(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

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

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

HuffPo seeks norms for citizen journalists

Did someone say citizen journalism necessarily lowers the bar?

Check out the Huffington Post's checklist of "citizen journalism publishing standards." It includes alerts for spelling, grammar, fact-checking, attribution, balance, and brevity.

A "benevolent whirl" from government may save newspapers from their "death-spiral"

Nearly two months after I made the suggestion on this blog, Johann Hari asks if the newspaper industry should get a bailout.

In an age of bailouts, several European governments are experimenting with ways to support the world of news-gathering so it will survive for the twenty-first century. The best plan has come from French President Nicholas Sarkozy. He has launched a programme where every French citizen, on her eighteenth birthday, will be given a year's free subscription to a newspaper of her choice. The effects are subtle. Many young readers will develop a newspaper habit. In turn, newspapers will compete harder to capture this lucrative guaranteed market, and make their product accessible and fresh. A benevolent whirl replaces the current death-spiral.

Of course there is a terrible danger in making newspapers dependent on the government's actions. Nobody wants that. But there are ways to avoid this trap. In 1971, the Swedish government set up a system of subsidies to newspapers allocated by an independent body on the basis of circulation and revenue data. Intriguingly, the Swedish press became more adversarial and critical after it was introduced, not less.

Find Mr. Hari's deal here.

Also see: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?

Exploit the new reality that audience is an ally, OffTheBus director exhorts journalists

Amanda Michel authors a crackerjack piece in the latest Columbia Journalism Review chronicling the success of OffTheBus, the "citizen-powered campaign news site" which saw a 27-fold increase in contributors during its 17 months of existence ending November of 2008.

Set up to cover the American presidential campaigns, OffTheBus was joint-sponsored by The Huffington Post and NewAssignment, and hosted by NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. It was the biggest citizen journalism experiment of its kind.

Ms. Michel, "not a journalist by training," directed OffTheBus. Her must-read story is available here. An extract:

OffTheBus discovered a niche market. Our market was defined by our access to on-the-ground information that other news outlets lacked, and collaborative, crowd-powered methods of newsgathering that made some traditional journalists uncomfortable. Private fundraisers, official campaign conference calls, volunteer meetings, and rallies—where mainstream reporters found themselves stuck in pens—were our specialty. We wanted to tell stories inaccessible to the national press. This required replacing objectivity with an ethic of transparency—we would never have broken Bittergate if we had not. ["Bittergate" refers to candidate Obama's guns-or-religion comment reported by San Francisco blogger Mayhill Fowler.]

Collectively, we could do what a single reporter or traditional news organization could not. We dispatched people to report on dozens of events happening simultaneously around the country. We distributed research tasks among hundreds of volunteers, instead of a handful of paid reporters working full-time for weeks. Ground-level access, networked intelligence, and distributed labor became our editorial mainstays. More than twelve thousand people eventually signed up to participate in one way or another, including seventeen hundred writers. With such numbers, Mayhill Fowler’s Bittergate story—or something like it—was almost inevitable.