Alana Taylor’s Take On Citizen Journalism VS Journalism
Monday, November 10th, 2008
Alana Taylor is a student at NYU and blogger who’s challenging journalism by participating in citizen journalism. Her interest in the shifting landscape of print to digital inspires her writing. She writes on her own blog and guest blogs at MediaShift, a PBS blog, when she’s not busy studying for her classes in school.
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What are my thoughts on citizen journalism? First we need more. More more more. Second we also need resources so citizens can learn a bit about what it means to be a journalist. Journalists have power and as Peter Parker will tell you that means journalists have responsibility. Third we need better places to publish our citizen journalism. Site like yournews.com just don’t seem to be taking off. Though it is a good idea and I’ve heard it does well in some parts of the country.
And one last thought… Where I am from the town paper does not do such a good job. I’ve it is because the staff reporters are overloaded and underpaid. They write fast and make a lot of mistakes. Many of us, myself included, will do all we can not to have a story written about us because the paper always, and I mean always, misquotes. That journalistic environment of just creating a need for citizen journalism. Like vigilantes with pens, we have to take the news into our own hands if we want something done right.
Don’t you think there is a problem with citizen journalists because they are under paid (if paid at all) and rushed?
How do you think citizen journalism will take off when the readers have to face check 5 other blogs just to make sure the information is correct?
Nice work! :D
Hi Bill, thanks.
Interesting thoughts. I just attended a conference in which the speakers’ message was that the term “Citizen Journalist” carries a certain baggage that makes traditional journalists shun them. The main idea was that if you do you operate under a code of ethics then you shouldn’t be afraid to call yourself a journalist. The fact that you report online as opposed to in print shouldn’t make a difference in what you call yourself.
I’m not so sure I fully agree with this. Those who already don’t trust the mainstream media and actively seek out an alternative news source are often times attracted to sources that label themselves “citizen journalists.”
It’s true. Journalists don’t like citizen journalists getting the integrity of “journalist” in their badge.
I’m just saying that you have to fact check blogs. It’s all about speed so accuracy is less important.
As usual a great piece ;) Ive known Alana Taylor for some time now, follow her on twitter watch her Ustream and read her blog. U R so lucky to be living in NY the epicenter of New Social Media and to have access to all these personalities and places ;)
I believe that Citizen Journalism is the way of the future !! There is no way to STOP it. Main stream media in my opinion has taken a big hit from the new born New Social Media and specially Citizen Journalism. I mean Y spend hours watching Television to get your News when U can have it in matter of minutes from such sources as Twitter? Now some Mainstream Media such as CNN have smarten u and Rusng tools like Twitter to better their service !! Such is the power of Citizen Journalism !!!!
sorry for my typos in the last comment !!! I meant to say “Have smarten up” LOL
LOL np.
I like to get my news from twitter and blogs I follow too.
Hey Sarah,
I am a big fan of citizen journalism
In fact I recently partook in some citizen journalism with a local TV station
You can find out what I got up to by visiting the links below
http://blogs.itvlocal.com/Yorkshire/2008/09/30/guisely-vs-garforth-throws-up-an-interesting-match-for-the-itv-bloggers/
http://lukeb3000.blogspot.com/2008/09/round-up-of-todays-events.html
Cool. Well done!
Some thoughts about citizen journalism. It´s always good to learn the skills that you need, to do the job that you want to do. As a journalist I want to contribute stuff with relevance and good information within. I´ve got to be in the right space at the right time, to get fresh information at the source, or I´ll be one of the copycats, who were rewriting given stories in their own words. Of course, this could be good for practice, but not for serious journalism.
For me it doesn´t depend on your choice of media, where I can see your activities as a journalist. I think it´s best when both can learn from each other. Citizen journalists from ordinary journalists and vice versa.
I´m from Germany. We´ve got a daily newspaper called “Weltkompakt”. The makers of “Weltkompakt” are on Twitter, too. They´re tweeting about their work and it´s nice to read what´s in the making for the next issues, straight from their headquarter. Day by day. There are a lot of newspapers on Twitter but most of them only publish entries from their rss-feeds.
Journalism isn´t print only and there was another innovative act of journalism, by the german tv-channel called ZDF. On election-day they did a cross-media-night in one of their tv-subchannels combined with a chatroom on their website. That´s not the innovative part. Hold on! Later they were broadcasting from a corner of the media-central, to show the people in front of their TV-Stations, what they are doing there. They were round about ten students sitting on their notebooks. They pointed the cameras to their computerscreens and guess what. They showed a tweet of mine in the show. A little step for me, a bigger step for the big-media-fusion and citizen journalism. By the way: The guy, who organized this cross-media-night – Claus Kleber – quoted my tweet during the broadcast. Background: A male student described how twitter´s search works. I tweeted a tweet containing ZDF, so it ended up in their search results. Furthermore they were broadcasting a skype-session between a female student and a girl from CCC (Chaos Computer Club). The CCC girl wasn´t in the studio. She was somewhere in the wild. The place where citizen journalists find their meals ;) They were talking about the US-election, Obama, McCain and the security issues of a specific way to vote in political elections. The german tweet-o-sphere tweeted a lot of tweets about this cross-media-night and it was a joy for everyone, I guess.
My conclusion is: We have the tools to carry on democratic journalism. Every journalist is a cititzen, too. Come together for liquid conversation and feel free to show your skills in percepting and creating your environment for people like you and me.
Yes we can. :)
It’s true. We must do so.
I like your story about the journalists using twitter as support for their story. That’s remarkable. I had a similar thing happen to me too. It’s nice when they give you credit. You will often see people who’s photos and videos are aired on the news and don’t get credit. So ZDF sound nice :)
Why don’t more journalists start blogging? You would think that in 5 years it will give them more job security right?
Sorry, I´ve forgotten to leave some greets for Alana Taylor. Hey Alana! How is it going? Remember me from a twittersong? Good to see you´re doing another challenge. ;)
This could be interesting, too.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/10/spotus-experiments-with-citizen-funded-community-journalism/
I think it is a good thing when used right. Fact checking is a concern for me when reading about issues that could impact me. This is something where journalism has to gain a following and be trusted. Even still, look at CNN with posting that Steve Jobs was on a stretcher. That was thru a citizen journalism, Apple’s stocks plunged. As a whole I think it is necessary to get many angles on a single subject. The money issue, well, I do not see lots of people quitting their day jobs.
exactly, but then the stock went up after everyone found out that was a false alarm.
Yea, that was an extreme case and luckily not the norm. I agree journalism will never die. There will always be venues to get the message out. Blogs are where its at now.
Hey Sarah, I’ve been a journalist reporting mainly on politics and foreign affairs for some years now. I’m all for ‘citizen journalism’ because for far too long old technologies prevented ‘citizens’ from engaging on public interest issues and issues of mass appeal.
Like we all know, that’s all changed, the gatekeepers have had the keys taken off them and people have found a voice and a means to engage.
The challenge for journalists know is one of professional development, to make sense of all the information that is out there. Even when ‘citizen journalists’ inform us all on the what, when, where and who questions, journalists need to develop the skills to answer the why questions.
In summary, there are good reasons why a whole generation of people have switched off the mainstream media and tuned into themselves. Journalists need to advance with the times, not revert back to age-old instincts in a vain attempt to re-lock the gates.
Stimulating topic! Good on you Sarah of NYC!
:)
PS: Hope my ramble was lucid, I’m jetlagged and on assignment in Indonesia ;-)
Great video of the guy singer, singing themes like starwars, jaws, jurassic park, superman, indiana, ET, alls classics pictures for me. Awsome video and the wookie efects grrroarr!!XD very cool equal than his t shirts =) !! he is a great singer thx. :)
Thanks! hahahaha he is great!
Hi!! yes, i agree with you 100%… =)
The Good: Everyone who blogs is really a citizen journalist–providing information and perspective to the mass market. Advantages are timeliness and multiple viewpoints. The more information the better, the more viewpoints the better. (By the way, sometimes think blogging for some people is just a big public diary). That might be interesting or it might be boring, but in general people sharing their experiences is a great leap forward in communication and societal development. Freeing the “citizen” to be a checks and balances to those in power and those in control of the “news”.
The Bad: Any report, news, or viewpoint in “real” journalism has to be sourced and verifiable to the extent possible. Any blog post can just be a complete fabrication. However, they can, as true journalists, gain a reputation for truthfulness, sourcing and unbiased “reporting”. One creeping problem in mainstream journalism is that they are bending their own standards when they use editorial decisions to restrict content or modify news stories or take things out of context to support one point to view over another (ie politics in particular). Editorial content is confused with hard news.
The Ugly: Beware, another word for corrupted unverifiable news and information repeated and provided from only one point of view to support a particular ideology can also be defined as propaganda.
Dean, I have heard people say that anyone who has a cell phone that uploads content to the web is a citizen journalist. Even if it’s lifecasting!
The more viewpoints the better, but isn’t there a point where it becomes too much!? I like democratization of media. It’s a beautiful thing. Maybe you should trust some blogs because you can’t always fact check everything you read on blogs and see online.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks to you and Alana Taylor for your great report and also your weekly Pop17 live shows on Mogulus.
As a Technician/ TV Producer, I realized the potential in broadcasting live/breaking news by citizen journalists that has now become a reality as soon as we put live cell phone video via qik on a Mogulus embedded player on our community news site at:
http://cphvoice.com
The Copenhagen Voice, Denmark.
I’ll tell you that since September, even hardened “traditional” journalists have approached us about the possibility of contributing to the site, which now gives it a blend of live events via qik or flixwagon on video,”slow news” reporting and photographs.
Recent developments in technology have totally democratized the way we report, produce, and distribute current events in the community, even though we sometimes feel the technology is still playing catch up to what we want it to do!
We are, at the present, in the process of moving our site over to a more interactive platform, that will allow anyone in the community to contribute to “The News”.
-Dave
Wow, is it going to be a 24/7 channel?
hmmm! im think so
I’ve been dabbling in citizen journalism and didn’t even know it.
I do tend to agree with Dean on this one, but the bad, and unreliable journalists will weed themselves out at some point. After all, are you going to share someones news with someone else if it’s unreliable? I know I would be searching for a trustworthy source if I was to repeat or re-link and story. Just my thoughts on the subject.
I’m going back and forth.
Hopefully, 24/7, yes.
Right now we pop in and out when go live with our cellphones using qik or flixwagon or broadcasting an event through Mogulus. Sorta like The Ground Report does.
Twitter sends automatic alerts out when we go live from our cells.
We also have a video archive on tumblr:
http://cphvoice.tumblr.com
-David
Here is a current prime example of a false “news story” not being properly sourced or vetted, then being spread blog to blog. Be careful what you believe when you read it on a blog post, especially those forwarded or copied from a third party:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/11/13/msnbc-retracts-false-palin-story-duped/
haha