Folly of citizen journalism?
Over at PCMag, John C. Dvorak takes a shot at citizen journalism: A number of hopeless citizen journalist initiatives are emerging, most of them promoted by idealistic professionals such as Jay Rosen, Dan Gillmor, and Jeff Jarvis, who are disappointed with the way things are going in the world of news reportage. The most notable is Backfence, a series of mundane, localized news sites that focus on reports submitted by citizen journalists. But in this instance, a citizen journalist is no more a journalist than someone who adds comments to a football forum -- it's laughable.
And,
Citizen journalism, to me, is like citizen professional baseball -- it's just not practical. You can't play professional baseball just because you think the Seattle Mariners stink. You're not a good enough ballplayer. Yes, bloggers have been breaking news stories here and there, but it's usually because they amplify something that media professionals have already written about but that was ignored by the major media. Bloggers, millions of gadflies, have been hounding Big Media.
The rest of the piece is pretty hard on both newspapers, bloggers and citizen journalism.
I think he's wrong.
I think we're watching the birthing of new media and new journalism forms. I don't know why anyone would expect that to occur fully baked without a few collapsed souffles. Instead, innovators such as Rosen, Gillmor and Jarvis are experimenting, looking for alternatives, helping raise new voices and finding interesting ways of spreading the news.
Imagine what the media landscape will look like in 10 years. It's surely not going to look like it does today, anymore than today looks like 1996. The innovators are developing the forms, the voices and the tools to get us to 2016. (Heck, to 2008, for that matter.) The more people who engage the better. Of course there are failures and silliness and diversions along the way; that's to be expected of any innovation.
We have had our own issues, problems and obstacles with our citizen journalism efforts. Lex and Daniel Rubin will lead a session on citizen participation at ConvergeSouth. I hope to learn something about citizen journalism and innovation there. Join us.
Meanwhile, ponder the old media aspersions and proceed with experimentation. It's the only way to move forward.
Comments (3)
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You do realize that Dvorak pretty much poo-poo's everything right? He's the cynic of all cynics. Has a lot of good ideas, but he points out the bad in everything. I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, but you have to realize that before reading anything he writes.
Posted on September 30, 2006 11:59 PM
And he's not a commenter on this blog? Go figure. (I'm joking!)
Posted on October 1, 2006 12:02 PM
"Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are."
- George Santayana
Posted on October 2, 2006 4:16 PM