In "The Idea of Public Journalism" Theodore Glasser presents essays deconstructing the trend of citizen journalismPhoto: Barnes & Noble
The Internet is everywhere. This might elicit a Homer Simpson style response, but I'm serious. Everywhere. Actually, maybe it is more correct to say the people who supply the Internet with content are everywhere. Recording. Blogging. Gossiping. Photographing. The use of the Internet to document our daily lives is so ubiquitous in the United States Time magazine named You as their person of the year.
That's right. You. You reading this blog. You spending hours at your computer reading news articles or watching video. You, the person contributes to this massive social experiment that is the World Wide Web.
It didn't take long before someone realized the full intellectual power of the Internet and decided to give these people a job. But not a real job, just an unpaid one.
A news director at KFTY TV50, a small public access station covering the San Francisco metropolitan area has made the decision to fire 13 reporters from his news staff and replace them with ordinary citizens. He put his faith in these people to provide content for his station. The people who read blogs. The people who post on message boards. The same people who post and watch videos of stupid pet tricks on YouTube. You.
As radical as this idea might seem, previous trials have spurred surprisingly effective results.
According to a Washington Post article, which unfortunately you must pay to read on the Web site, the largest newspaper chain in the nation, Gannett Co., owner of the USA Today, has field tested an integrated newsgathering approach that relies on citizen support and the Internet.
The article describes how the Fort Myers News-Press , a paper in Florida, recently used used local experts to scrutinize city documents, eventually resulting the in the resignation of a city official.
Gannett is also trying the strategy at other papers, such as the Des Moines Register, where it is increasing the convergence of print and online media.
Other smaller stories of success are common in other regions.
In September 2006 the Seattle Times published an article highlighting the effect citizen journalism was having on a local community.
The article commended a blog titled Capitol Hill Seattle for providing citizens with common public information, such as a list of open swimming pools, as well as hard stories such as neighborhood crime rates.
Citizen journalism is even beginning to catch on around Lawrence. An new program, dubbed the Citizen Journalism Academy, recently graduated its first class of 22 people. The academy was sponsored by the two journalism heavyweights in town, The William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the monopolistic The World Company.
I do not view academies like this as training grounds for our replacements, but simply training grounds to improve our reporting. By listening to the comments and concerns of our audience and learning about their interests, it allows us to provide them with better content.
The essence of citizen journalism is to give the source easier access to the publishers. Citizen journalism is not in line to destroy us, but to help us. The citizen journalists are creating an interactive front porch where they can share the stories they care about and are letting on the secret.
Modern journalism will not be replaced by a new breed of people, only a new breed of reporters. The outfits operated by citizen journalists cannot be sustained indefinitely before they begin to grow and resemble a traditional news organization. In the words of Uncle Rick, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
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