ugachaka :: Jacob was here

Some journalists come off pretty snooty about believing bloggers should not be considered in the same breath as journalists. The high and mighty attitude usually stems from journalists not wanting to be belittled into the same mold. Bloggers don’t have editors or credibility a great deal of the time, so their resources are strapped. Some blogs are just opinionated claptraps of nonsense or what someone ate for lunch, but some can actually do real journalism.

It seems that as much as journalists rubbed off on bloggers, bloggers are rubbing off on journalists. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) just sent out an email alert today to tackle information gathering within the entire journalism community.

An unidentified senator placed a “secret hold” on a bill similar to the Open Government Act that was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am not so sure what exactly a “secret hold” is or how right it is that politicians should be able to keep secrets about our political process, but SPJ alerted everyone to use the resources of the entire community to call up every senator’s office and check to see who was the one to place this secret hold.

One of SPJ’s main crusades is the pursuit of expanding the freedom of information within the United States. I wouldn’t be a member if I didn’t already believe the organization was doing great things for journalism AND blogging. I also have to point out how interesting it is for them to take the citizen journalism approach. Embracing citizen journalism is the next step for the fourth estate in my opinion. If these types of efforts could be incorporated into some kind of social network of journalists online, the freedom and fast flow of information could be greatly improved.

A recent article by David Carr in the NY Times explored the future of citizen journalism as viewed by Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University. Rosen’s project, AssignmentZero, uses citizen journalism to produce news stories under the guidance of editors. This combined reporting effort is known as “crowdsourcing.”

Wired magazine is teaming up with Rosen to use citizen journalists to possibly produce future articles for Wired. You can visit their assignment desk online. Thus far, it looks like there are some fairly interesting stories building.

I just caught the AP article that they will now be partnering up with NowPublic.com to incorporate citizen journalism into their news coverage. You can check out NowPublic.com here. This the first time that I have heard of this site, but I have seen the many sites springing up to collect citizen cell phone pictures to use in the coverage of breaking stories such as the Yahoo! and Reuters deal.

I think that is a great idea. Using citizens as journalists will only lead to a more diverse press and, although it may be slightly more disorganized and possibly inaccurate, everyone has always dealt with getting their news through some kind of channel similar to citizen journalism–gossip. The world has already adjusted to not being able to trust news sources–Fox News–so I don’t see it causing any more problems as we go down this path.

Dr. Steven Reese chaired a panel on Citizen Journalism: Possibilities and Pitfalls.

Sharon Meraz started the panel speaking about her paper on the use of the Internet during terrorism and disaster coverage such as the Indian Ocean earthquake, London bombings and Hurricane Katrina. She also brought up the term Citizen Paparazzi with sites like Spy Media, Scoopt, and Cell Journalist. Celebrity disguises are going to have to get better if this keeps up, or they are never going to be safe in public. Imagine 20 people fighting to get a cell phone pic of a celebrity everyday–insanity.

Neil Thurman from City University-London talked to several editors and found that the blogs were seen as a challenge to the tradition of unbiased journalism since many blogs are biased and opinionated. I think blogs should be thought of as Mindy McAdams would later comment–as a delivery system. With qualifiers like diary blogs, journalism blogs, political blogs and so on, blogs can be seen as more than just the spoutings of Bill O’Reilly. I want to keep mine somewhere between an editorial and journalism blog–at least right now, but everything on the Internet adapts and changes. Thurman talked more about the use of message boards on newspaper sites, but he lost me since I was partly starting to work on a story and partly just not smitten enough with his British accent–nothing against Brits.

Lou Rutigliano from good ol’ UT-Austin and UnknownCity.com revealed the large groups of citizens missing out on the whole Web 2.0 explosion that gets talked up so much these days. Never thought about how many possibilities there were for homeless, immigrant workers and other disadvantaged citizens to use the Web–especially the social Web. Rutigliano mentioned things like immigrant workers being able to review and comment on different contractors to work for and to avoid or homeless using the Web to create a new form of “Hobo codes,” or urban tagging used to identify locations and buildings where homeless can get meals, clothes or other free items. Rutigliano was a great speaker and his presentation had some funny moments like when he called EastAustin.com (update: site now MIA it seems) Web .05.

Pluck works to bring blogs to the mainstream media with BlogBurst–essentially a wire service for blogs. Julie Neumann from UT-Austin and the Austinist did a professional case study on the use of blogs in BlogBurst.

“For me, journalism was ink and paper and having an editor,” Neumann said on her conversion to the online journalistic world.

As far as the argument goes on whether bloggers are journalists, I think Neumann said it best: “[Bloggers] are in journalism, and they are affecting journalism.”

The advantage of blogs come in their ease of publication and the possibility of linkage interaction–something that should have huge appeal to publishers according to Neumann’s analysis. Hear that publishers? I am waiting.

Neumann explained that new media does not kill off the old media; it just causes it to adapt. New media is always a metamorphosis of old media. Shovelware just won’t cut it anymore. Neumann said blogs could even be better at doing journalism in some ways–like local eyewitness coverage.

As far as blogger rep, Neumann said she got treated as well or even better than her print or broadcast compadres when she told PR people or gatekeepers that she was a blogger with the Austinist. Bloggers allow for immediate berating when you anger them–are you afraid, PR professional?

The panel had great input, but the final consensus seemed to be that blogs, citizen journalism and the mainstream media are going to have to get together in a test tube and make some strange-looking baby that everyone will make fun of until it grows into its own. I bet it will have big pointy ears.

Technorati tag: journalism, multimedia, blogging, Web 2.0, BlogBurst.

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Jim Brady, vice president and executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, spoke today in a panel titled The Impact of Journalism and Social Media on Newspapers at the 7th International Symposium on Online Journalism that reporters have started to get bragging rights from how many bloggers are writing about their stories. Makes one wonder whether the scoop still matters of whether now it is just who starts the dialogues. If journalists begin to judge themselves on how much talk they get in the blogosphere, what prevents sensationalism? Regardless of my concern, it is still an interesting development in online journalism.

Through byline linking, the Washingtonpost.com has developed a dialogue with their readers. Brady said many of the reporters even respond frequently to comments as long as they are not just abusive junk–like you kids that use the asterik too much.

Editor Juan Carlos Lujan Zavala presented a pretty interesting presentation on his citizen journalism publication at ElComercio.com.pe. In Lima, Peru, he is getting thousands of comments on popular stories like the ones covering the upcoming elections in Peru. They run commercials encouraging everyone to find their inner journalist including a pretty funny one about a guy taking a cell phone picture of a giant spider (can’t find a link otherwise I would post it). Do we have as innovative a citizen journalism publication here?

Scott Clark, vice president and editor of the HoustonChronicle.com, has a reporter attacked by a roving band of jazz enthusiasts for the Chronicle’s poor coverage of the jazz community–getting rougher and rougher to be a journalist these days. As a newspaper writer, the interaction between writer and reader lacks the closeness and dialogue it has with the community. The Chronicle also experimented with using citizen journalism by having bloggers spread out throughout the coastline and cover Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. They let their reader blogs do almost anything they want. They followed a University of Texas Daily Texan reporter on a road trip to the Rose Bowl.

Fred Zipp, managing editor of the Austin American-Statesman, talked about starting up the reader blogs. Want to read about where the bluebonnets are in Texas? Check out the Stateman reader blog following bluebonnets…of all things. Zipp finds that the blogs are a great way to express opinion but not really creating traditional journalism–depends on how you use it I guess, but I would disagree. At least the community blogs are completely uncensored.

Robert Rivard, vice president and executive editor of the San Antonio Express-News, commented that community bloggers with agendas soon realized that they needed to do some audience building and cool down a bit of their zealotry in they really wanted to succeed. Other panelists–Brady and Clark–agreed that they could just let those who wanted to scream do so in their own little “dark corner” of the website and not be promoted by the site.

Public Relations Blog

During Q&A, the panelists were asked how they could prevent PR professionals from starting spin blogs within their community blogs. Frankly, they didn’t have much to offer in the way of prevention. There has been some recent controversy about a blogger who turned out to be a PR pro already, but none of the panelists could really offer up any method of filtering other than a general ability to smell something fishy and prevention of “spam” blogs.

Technorati tag: journalism, citizenjournalism, blogging, media, washingtonpost.

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