'We Media' in html

Shayne Bowman over at Hypergene Media has formatted an HTML version of the New Directions for News report "We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information." Previously it was available just in PDF form.

Glocal journalism

"Glocal Journalismî in the United States: an interview with Doug McGill and Raman Narayanan on Wisconsin Public Radio (an audio version is also available). I've never liked the term glocal journalism -- why make up terms when you don't have to? -- but the moderator explains it here:

A growing movement in American journalism is trying to do just that, to illuminate the connections between our local community and the international world. Itís called glocalizing the news and its being practiced by dozens or more small- and mid-sized newspapers.

Blogging vs. journalism: Another casualty

Dan Gillmor reports that Chinese blogger Chi-Chu Tschang says he was fired by the Bloomberg news agency because of his blog. I don't see anything remotely objectionable in his weblog, so we'll have to wait for more details.

OhmyNews enlists citizens as reporters

Another look at South Korea's OhmyNews, this time from the Japan Media Review, a sister publication of OJR.

'We Media' report finished

New Directions for News earlier this week posted the final chapters in our seven-part report called We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information. It's the most thorough analysis I've seen of the trends, often discussed on this list, relating to participatory journalism. Writers Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis did a terrific job in surveying the field and pulling together disparate bits of information to build a case for a new relationship between media companies and their audiences. (Disclaimer: I served as editor.)

The final chapter (pdf) explores ways for media companies to integrate participatory journalism into their existing operations. Some key points, which the report probes in depth:

• Make your newsroom responsive to change

• Give your staff some level of autonomy

• Embrace the audience as a valued partner

• Embrace customers as innovators

• Donít own the story. Share the story.

Send Dave to Israel

Here's an interesting new site -- SendDavetoIsrael.com -- and another intriguing example of participatory journalism. Dave says by email:

I really enjoyed your series on participatory journalism. I have been interested in the subject since 1996 when I tried to predict the consequences of the internet for China in a dissertation. I did not realize at the time that great change was in store for the west as well. Your series really helped me to clarify some thoughts I have had on technology, empowerment, economics, and society. I have finally (it has been six years since my dissertation) taken the plunge first hand to see if technology really can enable people to do new and exciting things.

The goal of his site is to raise money to "embed" Dave in Israel for a few weeks. He says, "It's time that someone besides government officials and 'professional' journalists interpret what is happening in Israel and walk the roads that make up the Road Map." Dave explains the genesis of his proposed trip here.

It's a hefty sum, but I wish him luck.

Blogworld: The new amateur journalism

Good piece on blogging's contribution to the media ecosystem by Matt Welch in the Columbia Journaiism Review: Blogworld: The New Amateur Journalists Weigh In. What have bloggers contributed to journalism? (Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.) Excerpt:

No one knows how many active blogs there are worldwide, but Blogcount (yes, a blog that counts blogs) guesses between 2.4 million and 2.9 million. Freedom of the press belongs to nearly 3 million people.

So what have these people contributed to journalism? Four things: personality, eyewitness testimony, editorial filtering, and uncounted gigabytes of new knowledge.

"Why are Weblogs popular?" asks Jarvis, whose company has launched four dozen of them, ranging from beachcams on the Jersey shore to a temporary blog during the latest Iraq war. "I think it's because they have something to say. In a media world that's otherwise leached of opinions and life, there's so much life in them." ...

Outsiders with vivid writing styles and unique viewpoints have risen to the top of the blog heap and begun vaulting into mainstream media. Less than two years ago, Elizabeth Spiers was a tech-stock analyst for a hedge fund who at night wrote sharp-tongued observations about Manhattan life on her personal blog; now she's the It Girl of New York media, lancing her colleagues at Gawker.com, while doing free-lance work for the Times, the New York Post, Radar, and other publications. Salam Pax, a pseudonymous young gay Iraqi architect who made hearts flutter with his idiosyncratic personal descriptions of Baghdad before and after the war, now writes columns for The Guardian and in July signed a book deal with Grove/Atlantic. Steven Den Beste, a middle-aged unemployed software engineer in San Diego, has been spinning out thousands of words of international analysis most every day for the last two years; recently he has been seen in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. ...

Besides introducing valuable new sources of information to readers, these sites are also forcing their proprietors to act like journalists: choosing stories, judging the credibility of sources, writing headlines, taking pictures, developing prose styles, dealing with readers, building audience, weighing libel considerations, and occasionally conducting informed investigations on their own. Thousands of amateurs are learning how we do our work, becoming in the process more sophisticated readers and sharper critics. For lazy columnists and defensive gatekeepers, it can seem as if the hounds from a mediocre hell have been unleashed. But for curious professionals, it is a marvelous opportunity and entertaining spectacle; they discover what the audience finds important and encounter specialists who can rip apart the work of many a generalist. More than just A.J. Liebling-style press criticism, journalists finally have something approaching real peer review, in all its brutality. If they truly value the scientific method, they should rejoice. Blogs can bring a collective intelligence to bear on a question. ...

Great, great stuff here, Matt.

CJR has also published a far-too-abbreviated list of journalism bloggers: The Media Go Blogging.

Jesse Ventura's talk show canned?

Mitch Ratcliffe says his colleague at Correspondences.org has the scoop that Jesse Ventura's talk show is being scrapped before it ever launches. Mitch cites this as yet another example of participatory journalism. Pretty good, if it holds up. One quibble, though: Is this the MSNBC-TV show that Jesse was set to host? The item doesn't say.

BBC posts reader photos sent by MMS

Emily Turrettini of Picturephoning.com sends word that BBC offered a two-way MMS service (Multimedia Messaging System, the successor to SMS) at the Notting Hill carnival -- one of Europe's largest events -- this weekend in the United Kingdom and posted a slideshow of the best shots from participants' mobile phones.

A photo blog of the blackout

Before you can blink, a moblogger at Textamerica has put up a photo blog of today's great blackout.

Talk about participatory journalism!

Thanks to Ryan for the pointer.

Citizen publishing: A reality tour

This lifted verbatim from a Tuesday posting on Sheila's blog (the perma-link wasn't working, but it is now):

Citizen publishing: A reality tour. jobforjohn.com, created by John Andrew of Northfield, Minn., takes job-hunting to new heights. Here's how it starts,

Hello, thanks for visiting my site, JobforJohn.com. Last Thursday, July 24th I was "downsized" from my job of 3 years at a software company.

Later the same day I heard that President Bush's economic team would be doing a bus tour through Wisconsin and Minnesota this week touting Bush's tax cut and its prosperous economic effects.

"What a bunch of BS. I'd like to give their PR tour a dose of reality," is what I thought. So I packed up the minivan and decided to follow their bus around the countryside and talk to whoever would listen about the real facts -- that this economy stinks, and Bush's tax cuts are making it worse.

And off he goes. At one point, he finds himself in the drive-through at a fast-food restaurant Wausau, Wis., as Treasury Secretary John Snow walks by, and he gets his attention:

"What's your story?" Snow says.

I tell him I was laid off last week & saw that he was coming & I thought it was important to come here and let him see the reality of what's going on in today's economy.

"What industry were you in?"

"Most recently the software industry."

"That's a particularly vulnerable part of the economy."

"Yes, well, I need a new job & it doesn't look good."

"Just wait," he said. "The first tax cuts haven't really taken effect. So just wait... the second tax cut... well, it' won't hit the economy for several months, but I'm sure you'll get a job." ...

John then writes, "Snow later recounted his version of our conversation to reporters," linking to an AP story about the tour:

One resourceful demonstrator decided to get into his car and use the restaurant's drive-through window, which remained open, to order a frozen custard while also making his views known.

Snow, who happened to be walking by, responded to the man's comments about the inadequacies of the Bush economic program.

"He said, `Your tax cut hasn't done anything for me,'" Snow told reporters later. Snow said the man told him he was upset because he had been laid off about a month ago from a computer job.

"I know what it is like to not have a job and to want one," said Snow, recounting his early years before he became a wealthy railroad executive.

John blogs the trip, adds photos from the road, photos of his kids. It's a personal, irresistible report from the heartland. His site is a fine example of the citizen journalism.

An interview on citizen journalism

Michel Dumais, technology columnist for Le Devoir, a newspaper in Quebec, interviewed me by e-mail over the weekend on the subject of what he calls citizen journalism and what I call participatory journalism.

He writes a journalism blog in conjunction with his newspaper column, and posted part one of our interview here, in French Canadian. And here is Dumais's column in Le Devoir. I recognize some familiar names in this graf:

Trois journalistes amÈricains, Dan Gillmor chroniqueur ÈmÈrite au SanJose MercuryNews, Doc Searls, journaliste et co-auteur du Cluetrain Manifesto et JD Lasica, rÈdacteur au Online Journalism Review, constatent eux aussi que cette crise est bien palpable et, selon Gillmor, ´celle-ci ira en s'amplifiant.

The interview covered online ethics, credibility, personal reporting and whether open-source journalism and traditional journalism can co-exist. I'll post it in full below ... in English.

Do you think thereís a credibility crisis with the institutional media vs. Mr. Joe Public?

Thereís a growing credibility gap between what the news media report and what the public believes. The explosion in the number of media sources over recent years has alerted people to the fact that what they read in the newspaper or see on television does not always reflect reality as they know it. The rise of what I call ëpersonal mediaí -- weblogs, independent niche news sites, and other forms of amateur journalism -- gives people the ability to ferret out the truth for themselves. New technologies allow ordinary people to become creators and producers of news instead of couch potatoes who passively absorb whatever institutional media funnel our way.

Do you think weblogs are a new form of journalism?

Few bloggers fancy themselves journalists, but many acknowledge that their blogs take on some of the trappings of journalism: They take part in the editorial function of selecting newsworthy and interesting topics, they add analysis, insight and commentary, and occasionally they provide a first-person report about an event, a trend, a subject. Over time, bloggers build up a publishing track record, much as any news publication does when it starts out.

Not all weblogs engage in journalism. But some clearly do. However, it is a journalism of a different sort, one not tightly confined by the professionís traditions and values.

If yes, what do you think it will bring to our profession? To the public?

Blogs bring fresh voices and alternative points of view to the public discourse. By making the news process more open, transparent and democratic, blogging also has a positive effect on the craft of journalism, although newsrooms still have a long, long way to go.

Have you published stories on your blog that you havenít check before? Why?

Iíve published a few stories on my blog that I havenít been able to verify, but always with an introduction saying that I donít know whether this is true. As a journalist, you get a sense of whether something passes ëthe smell test.í Because I donít receive any income from my weblog, I donít have the means to make long-distance phone calls and spend hours tracking down the accuracy of a report. Instead, I rely on my audience to serve that authentication function.

For instance, after Sept. 11, I received an unmarked e-mail that contained an amazing story about the hospitality of a town in Newfoundland that served as a waystation for airliners diverted from the United States because of the terrorist attacks. I posted the story on my weblog because it read like a true first-person account by the co-pilot of one of the diverted planes. I asked my readers whether anyone could verify the account. Within days, several readers pointed to corroborating evidence. Several journalists also contacted me, asking for additional information. And one Canadian journalist finally tracked down the author of the piece and informed me that his name was misspelled but otherwise the account was accurate.

In Gander, the hospitality of perfect strangers

A blog is sometimes a ìraw unedited feed.î Do you think there is a danger for the ìeditorî of a blog to publish a story without validating it first?

I believe all bloggers have a responsibility to state whether they know if a story they publish is true or is just an unverified report. But the main responsibility lies with the reader. I'm always amazed at the credulity of people who tend to believe something just because they read it on the Internet. We need to fine-tune our bullshit meters by expressing skepticism each time we come across a far-out story from an unverified source.

Almost every week a relative or friend sends me an e-mail saying they had 'heard this on the Internet' and wondered if it was true. I finally put up a Web page to steer people to sites that debunk Internet rumors. We should trust blogs and other Internet sources only to the extent that they have earned our trust.

Do you think traditional media will have to rely more and more on weblogs as a source of information? How will you judge the credibility of a story published on a blog?

Many bloggers have staked out a legitimate claim as experts in subjects as diverse as wireless networking, copyright infringement, sonnet poetry and much more. Their blogs are written with a high degree of insight and sophistication. I know of many readers who now turn to gifted amateurs or impassioned experts with a deep understanding of niche subjects, rather than to journalists who are generalists and cover topics a mile wide but an inch deep.

Can traditional journalism and this new ìcitizen journalismî co-exist? Do you think weblogs can offer something different to journalism?

Blogging will not replace traditional media or drive news organizations out of business. But citizen journalism will provide a valuable supplement to traditional media. When a major news event unfolds, most readers will continue to turn to institutional media for their news fix. But the story doesnít stop there. On almost any major story, the weblog community adds depth, analysis, alternative perspectives, foreign views, and occasionally first-person accounts that contravene reports in the mainstream press.

Journalists should not see blogs as a threat. For readers, itís not a binary, either-or choice. Instead of looking at blogging and traditional journalism as rivals, we should recognize that they complement each other, intersect with each other, play off one another.

Weblogs do offer new opportunities to journalists. Journalists who blog are doing things that they canít do in their traditional roles. On their blogs they ask readers for expert input, post the complete text of interviews alongside the published story, expose the raw material of their stories-in-progress, and write follow-up stories based on readersí tips and suggestions. Giving readers a voice in the editorial process -- by letting them provide meaningful feedback or suggesting story leads -- increases loyalty and understanding.

Do you think that a lot of journalists react negatively to blogs, comments from their readers and new technology because they donít want to accept the facts that sometimes readers know more than you?

I think journalists are often slow to adapt to change. We have been trained to think of ourselves as a special elite who report, filter and interpret the news for lay people. And itís hard to accept the notion that ordinary folks can use the tools of our trade to engage in journalism.

But I find that as journalists learn more about blogging, they accept this as an interesting new form of information and a good alternative source of expertise.

Where do you think weíre going with ìcitizen journalismî or ìopen source journalismî?

Weíre heading to a more open and democratic media ecosystem where people at all rungs of society get to participate in a dialogue about news. Take three examples from recent months:

ï During the peace demonstrations in February, Lisa Rein took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, camcorder in hand, and taped video footage of the marchers and speakers, such as congresswoman Barbara Lee, actor Harry Belafonte and antiwar activist Ron Kovic. She posted the video on her weblog, complete with color commentary, providing much deeper coverage of the events than a viewer would get by watching the local news.

ï At technology and media conferences, such as PopTech, South by Southwest and Digital Hollywood, bloggers in the audience have reported conference events in real time, posting photographs, speaker transcripts, and summaries and analysis of key points a full day before readers could see comparable stories in the daily newspaper.

ï On July 16, 2003, blogger Andy Baio reported on the tragedy in which an elderly driver plowed through the Santa Monica Farmers Market just outside Baioís office window. He had been walking down that street 20 minutes before. Baio described ìthe dead and dying" lying in the street and relayed first-hand reports from office co-workers who were eyewitnesses. He also posted a map of the accident scene, laid out a detailed chronology of events, and pointed to media coverage and photographs of the bloody scene.

What do you think of this statement: Weblogs will replace those big analyst houses that normally you consult when you need a source of niche expertise?

Blogs wonít completely replace the traditional analysts found in journalistsí Rolodexes. But blogs will become an increasingly important supplemental source of expert analysis. Thatís a welcome development. As media become more diverse, so will our sources of expert advice and commentary.

Do you think webloggers have less integrity than journalists?

No. Bloggers write chiefly out of passion. They want to share their views with others -- theyíre not in it for a paycheck. There are far more bloggers than journalists -- at last count, there are more than 700,000 active blogs -- and yet itís the journalism profession that produces scandals about fabricated stories, conflicts of interest, and other unethical behavior. Not all bloggers are honest, but those who betray their readersí trust are quickly found out by the blogosphereís fact-checking machinery.

What can journalists (and traditional media) learn from ìamateur journalistsî?

They can learn that personal voice -- an important hallmark of blogs -- still attracts a wide following. Institutional journalism too often drains the blood from colorful writing.

They can learn that there are alternative perspectives outside the sometimes narrow purview allowed by traditional media.

And they can discover the value of transparency. Letting readers know that journalists are talented, creative individuals who hold opinions on a variety of subjects can only help to repersonalize journalism and make journalists more human in their readersí eyes.

How can the bloggers will deal with problems related to trust, ethics, accuracy? And the law? Do you think that, when weíll see the first lawsuit against a blogger, the ìchilling effectî will force bloggers to autoregulate themselves?

I think itís readers who have to maintain a skeptical eye when reading anything on the Internet, including blogs.

I donít think the law will have much impact on where blogging is going. The ìgossipyî nature of blogging will always be with us, because informal communication is part of human nature.

With all those tools, (weblogs, moblogs, cellular phones, SMS, photophones, webcam, etc...) that enable anybody to be an editor or.... a victim (ref.: Trent Lott) of those ënew journalistsî, and now that the medias, the political advisors, the business men, etc., are becoming more aware of their impacts, do you think that weíll see people becoming more and more politically correct, afraid of what they say or do, will be 5 minutes later published on the Web? A plain jane vanilla society?

On the contrary, I see political leaders taking up the weblog form themselves to engage the public directly and to correct misimpressions fostered by traditional media. In mid-July, presidential candidate Howard Dean guest-blogged on Larry Lessigís weblog:

This week, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich will do the same. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle began a weblog.

Yes, weblogs will hold political figures more accountable for their words and actions. Thatís a positive development.

What do you think of anonymity? Do you think that a weblogger, to have a minimum of credibility, should clearly identify himself? What can we believe? What can we trust?

Yes! I do not read anonymous weblogs, and I donít know why anyone would. The first thing I look for when I trip across an unfamiliar weblog is a link to the personís bio or background. How can we be expected to trust a personís observations or reports if we donít know who he is?

Thatís not to say that bloggers need professional credentials in order to blog. Anyone should be able to pick up the democratic tools of blogging. But the first rule ought to be, tell us about yourself.

Letís get back to moblogs and photophones. What about obtaining a permission? In some countries, like Canada, you need a permission before publishing a picture. What about reputation?

In Canada you need permission before publishing a photo taken in a public place? Certainly that canít be true of news photojournalists. Moblogging will force a reevaluation of traditional cultural mores and expectations. As the tools of personal media allow us all to become publishers, weíll be taking photos of friends, public speakers, protestors, street scenes and interesting-looking strangers, and e-mailing them to acquaintances and publishing them to photo blogs. That kind of free exchange of information and ideas -- that increase in openness and transparency -- will lead to some diminution of privacy, just as cell phones have increased our connectedness at the expense of our privacy.

Reputations wonít be ruined by moblogging. But perhaps carefully cultivated (and misleading) manufactured images will be punctured by the moblog paparazzi.

Weíve seen recently a new kind of site, RedPaper (www.redpaper.com) , where, as they say, RedPaper is the world's first collaborative Newspaper filled with articles for sale written by people from around the world. RedPaper's goal to is create an alternative to traditional media outlets by providing individuals with the capacity to publish valuable content on every matter of interest. What do you think of that new approach?

I hope they succeed, but I donít know if they can sustain their business model over the long haul. Weíre surrounded by so much free media today that getting people to pay money for editorial content is a real challenge.

Slashdot on participatory journalism

Yesterday afternoon my OJR series on participatory journalism got Slashdotted. I'm diving in now to post some comments.

Swarm journalism

Over at Reason Hit & Run, blogger Julian Sanchez -- who in May authored an article on what might be called distributed journalism, swarm journalism, or open-source journalism -- points to my three-part package in OJR on what I've been calling participatory journalism, part of a longer ongoing series I've been doing on the subject. This, after Jesse Walker of Reason Online pointed to the series four days ago (with responses here). Thanks, lads.

By the way, in a single graf, Julian nicely picks apart the Stealing the Internet piece up on TomPaine.

Readers weigh in on participatory journalism

The reader forum boards are humming over at OJR in response to my series on participatory journalism.

The articles are here, here and here, and the forums can be found here, here and here. The folks at indymedia have posted a couple of entries.

Uh-Oh. Paparazzi with Phonecams

Smartmobs.com: Uh-Oh: Paparazzi with Phonecams. Adds Steve Outing: "Tabloid editors are now wise to the idea of getting photo phones for their photographers -- all the better to blend in with the regular people and get that perfect candid of J-Lo having dinner."

A series on participatory journalism

A few hours ago the Online Journalism Review posted what I consider to be my most important series of articles this year (not counting the book I'm working on).

The subject is participatory journalism. The three-part package includes:

• Personal Broadcasting Opens Yet Another Front for Journalists

• Participatory Journalism Puts the Reader in the Driver's Seat

• What is Participatory Journalism?

OJR originally didn't package these well, but they've corrected this, so I've temporarily removed the articles from my site. (As I say below, my complaint is really with all online news outlets, which continue to make related material very difficult to find. In any event, that minor quibble about format shouldn't overshadow the thrust of the articles.)

An excerpt from the main article:

By night, Raven -- the name everyone uses for 47-year-old Harold Kionka -- works as a janitor, mopping the floors and cleaning the grease traps in TGIFriday's in Daytona Beach, Fla.

By day, he operates almost single-handedly a 24-hour Internet TV station, serving as owner, station manager, producer and on-air personality. Daytonabeach-live brings live coverage of events in the Florida resort town to as many as 17,000 viewers a day.

Raven and a handful of others are at the vanguard of a new breed of journalism: personal broadcasting. Using equipment that is now relatively inexpensive and simple to use, these video pioneers are claiming a stake in territory that was once the exclusive province of big media.

And the first sidebar:

The New Directions for News report says of this phenomenon: "Everyone on the Internet is a potential expert on some subject -- from Pez dispensers to digital photography techniques to wormholes -- and these participatory forms are great places to find and share not only obscure or rare information, but commentary that might be too controversial for mainstream media."

One of those niche publishers is Sheila Spencer Stover of Bunn, N.C., whose Indian name is Firehair Shining Spirit. She runs the Internet Native News and Issues List, a mailing list with 400 members, mostly native Americans. ...

"Our members talk about prison rights, religious freedom, the selling of spirituality, the repatriation of bones, the stockpiling of native artifacts in museums stolen out of grave sites, building on sacred lands, the reclaiming of languages, elder health, Alaskan natives afflicted by gas-sniffing, suicide on reservations, issues with Indian trust monies, the Pipestone project in Montana, where they want to build a theme park on sacred land -- we exchange news about anything and everything," she says.

Here's the series of articles I've written about new media as a force in empowering readers and citizen-journalists:

Follow-ups:

Steve Outing in E-Media Tidbits this morning recounts my complaint about OJR's burying my two sidebars. It wasn't that big a deal to me -- if it was, I would have taken it up with OJR's editors. As it turns out, they've redesigned the page to make the two siders more prominent.

My complaint is really with all online news outlets, which continue to make related material -- even stories that are part of the same package -- very difficult to find. It's one of the major flaws in the online news soup.

Mitch Ratcliffe over at Correspondences.org has kind words for the participatory journalism series, though he prefers the term "civic journalism." He's right -- the label's less important than the concept.

Howard Rheingold liked the package, too. He excerpted the section on programmers Matt Haughey and Rusty Foster's plan to launch a "smart mob-style site" to provide a place for independent reporting about next year's election. LostRemote.com also reported on that bit of news today.

Ernie the Attorney blogs from his temporary new home on TypePad.

Tim Porter weighs in thoughtfully, writing, "Self-publishing and other forms of participatory journalism are both a threat and an opportunity to traditional news media, particularly newspapers. Newspapers certainly don't need another media type with which to compete for reader attention, especially one that invites readers to sit at the keyboard themselves. They could, however, embrace the change and lead the reader instead of following him. Their track record in this area is lousy, though. Participatory journalism is another one of those fields that newspapers should be playing in even if they don't fully understand its implications. The future tends to unveil itself only to those who are there."

In "Moblog the vote," BoingBoing points to the 2nd OJR story by way of the mention in Lost Remote about the upcoming experiment in citizen coverage of the 2004 election.

At Projo, Sheila Lennon went nuts today with a great examination of the issues related to participatory journalism, pointing out specific kinds of reader participation that take place at the Providence Journal.

RedPaper: Another experiment in participatory journalism

Wired News:

A host of court documents in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case are available online from a collaborative publication created by ordinary citizens.

For $2 a pop, all the public documents filed in the case against the Los Angeles Lakers basketball star can be downloaded from the RedPaper, a 3-week-old collaborative website written by "citizen reporters." ...

The RedPaper is testing the market for specialist information, ordered and paid for over the Web using a micropayment system, which long has been touted as an essential component of online publishing.

"(The RedPaper) is a combination of eBay and The New York Times," said founder and editor Mike Gaynor. "You don't have to have something valuable in your garage. You just have to have something valuable in your head."

Backed by software giant Adobe Systems, the RedPaper is an experimental market for information, allowing anyone to publish and sell their writing, be it recipes for muffins or hard-to-get court documents.

The site has about 600 registered users, who have published several hundred articles on the site, including favorite drink recipes, car maintenance instructions, poetry and short fiction. ...

A first for moblogging news in Japan

OJR: A clip of breaking news video sent in from a camera phone airs on Japan's NHK network. A trucker videotaped a huge pileup on a busy expressway with his cell phone, and he called the clip in to NHK. A few minutes later, he's live on the phone while his grainy video of the deadly accident plays on the air. "Moblogging" is poised to change the dynamics of news coverage forever. OJR reports from the First International Moblogging Conference, held in Tokyo earlier this month.

Blogger journalism

Just tripped across this example of first-person blog journalism from last week. Blogger Andy Baio reported on the elderly driver who careened through a farmerís market just outside Baioís office window in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 16. He had been walking down that street 20 minutes before.

Baio described ìthe dead and dying" lying in the street and relayed first-hand reports from office co-workers who saw the driver. He also posted a map of the accident scene, laid out a detailed chronology of events, and pointed to media coverage and photographs of the bloody scene.

Participatory journalism at Correspondences.org

Correspondences.org has this Mission Statement:

Think of this as a "newspaper out of the box" where everyone can contribute. We're building a portal for reporting of events by participants and commentators covering all aspects of events around the world, locally and internationally: politics, business, economics, technology, medicine, media and culture.

Somehow I hadn't seen this site before. Good stuff here, like Today's Political Rewards, a regular feature. Yesterday Mitch Ratcliffe posted an entry on the day's Department of Defense contracts and the political contributions made by the companies that received them.

It's the sort of thing newspapers used to do.

Later: Mitch emails: "I'm hoping that if enough people pick up their own little hobby reporting efforts, so that we dissect the system that exists today, we can create something greater than the newspaper and CNN rolled into one genetically mutated civic journalism."

Blogger-journalist story

Several months ago I read an item about a journalist who raised a few thousand dollars through reader contributions on his weblog to finance his trip to some locatoin. I thought I blogged it, but now I can't find it, and I need it for inclusion in a report I'm editing on participatory journalism. (And no, it's not Andrew Sullivan.)

Can anyone remember the episode and send me a pointer?

Later: Well, I just stumbled upon it myself: Freelance journalist-blogger David Appel appealed to his readers readers to let him to pursue an investigative story.

Still later: Patrick Phillips of IWantMedia and Joseph L. Hall both emailed to jog my memory about Back to Iraq. Christopher Allbritton reported breaking war news from Iraq on his Web site, funded by 320 people who donated $14,334. Business Week Online asks: Are pay-to-read sites the future of journalism? (Steve Levy mentioned it here.)

Roll-your-own Net TV takes off

Wired News: Roll-Your-Own Net TV Takes Off.

Blogs breaking logjam of journalism

Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel: Blogs breaking logjam of journalism. Excerpt:

I'm not an expert on blogging, but I am a fan. As a regular visitor to a dozen or so news and opinion blogs, I'm riveted by the implications for my profession. Bloggers are making life interesting for reluctant mainstreamers like myself and for the public, whose access to information until now has been relatively controlled by traditional media.

I say "reluctant mainstreamer" because what I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo. [emphasis added] While mainstream journalists are tucked inside their newsroom cubicles deciphering management's latest "tidy desk" memo, bloggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America's Information Highway.

Only nitpick with the article: Matt Drudge is not a blogger. Isn't now, never has been.

Thanks to Ryan of Dead Parrot fame for the pointer.

Moblogs foreshadow online journalism's future

Howard Rheingold writes in OJR: Moblogs Offer Crystal Ball for Future of Online Journalism.

OJR asked Rheingold to pull together his thoughts on moblogging and how it will change journalism: Does the nascent moblogging movement mean journalism will eventually become more democratized, or is moblogging a fad destined to only ever be chic among a geeky minority?

Stories of participatory journalism

I'm working on an article for the Online Journalism Review about participatory journalism. I'm looking for examples of it. If you, or someone you know, has committed an act of participatory journalsm, drop me a line.

I'm not so much interested in the restaurant review you posted on your weblog. I'm thinking more about things like:

- covering a news event and posting video footage on your weblog or website

- examples of moblogging, perhaps with a camera phone, and publishing updates or coverage of an event, rally or speech on a group site

- community news sites where moms, dads or kids publish coverage of their local soccer team because it doesn't get coverage in the newspaper.

- examples of sending in "amateur" photos to a news site (as dallasnews.com and the BBC have done) or citizen reporting (a la Korea's ohmynews.com).

Citizen journalism in South Korea

Dan Gillmor is just back from South Korea and files this report in today's San Jose Merc: A new brand of journalism is taking root in South Korea. Excerpt:

OhmyNews is transforming the 20th century's journalism-as-lecture model, where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't, into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic.

The influence of OhmyNews is substantial, and expanding. It's credited with having helped elect the nation's current president, Roh Moo Hyun, who ran as a reformer. Roh granted his first post-election interview to the publication, snubbing the three major conservative newspapers that have dominated the print-journalism scene for years.

Even taxi drivers who don't have time for newspapers have heard of OhmyNews. The site draws millions of visitors daily.

Citizen-reporters in South Korea

USA Today has picked up on the story about citizen reporters writing for a South Korean news publication.

Japan's little online daily

New in Japan Media Review, the sister publication of the Online Journalism Review:

JanJan: Japan's Little Online Daily with Big Dreams
Frustrated with the complacent reporting offered up by Japan's daily papers, journalist and former mayor Ken Takeuchi launched Japan's first serious alternative online daily. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of OhmyNews, Korea's wildly successful online publication.

Moblogs: roving personal media outlets

Speaking of ReadMe, a while back Lisa Le Fevre interviewed me on the subject of moblogging. Turns out her piece appeared in ReadMe a couple of weeks back: The Three M's of Moblogs: Mobile Phone Blogging, Real-time Mobility and Mob Media. Whether they serve as personal travellogs, political weapons or media outlets on the go, moblogs take the amateur journalism of weblogs into the field. Excerpt from the article:

Today, moblogging is much more than an urban legend. Involving only a laptop and a wireless card, mobile blogging offers the potential for hybrid forms of media that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Now, multimedia news can travel faster as users call up information and text images from the street using personal cell phones. What results, is a three-way conference call between wireless technology, real-time mobility, and mobdriven media.

Howard Rheingold is quoted in the article as well. Here's the full Q&A I did with Lisa on the subject of moblogging:

How does mobile access to weblogs affect the writers and the readers?

I suspect we're talking about a niche of a niche. That may not be sexy, but the fact remains that perhaps only 1 or 2 percent of the half million bloggers out there will be using mobile access to update their weblogs. A lot of the professional blogging class already have a laptop, PDA or (soon) a tablet PC to update their blogs when they're on the go.

Most bloggers with mobile phones will use them to communicate with other bloggers or confidants before they post an entry. At the new media conference at UC Berkeley on Saturday, someone sent a text message to a member of the audience, who relayed the question to one of the panels. That's power.

If weblogging could be called a genre similar to diary or journal musings, what happens to it now that people can log on their blog while on the go?

In a few years, when mobile phones with text messaging or keyboard access begin to take off in a serious way, I think we'll see more people jump into the amateur journalism game. The temptation to report, or chronicle, a public event as it's happening will be enormous. It will become second nature for young people to get on their mobiles and tell the world what they're experiencing.

This will really be something when built-in cameras and camcorders become pervasive, so that bloggers can broadcast visuals in real time. Text is cool, but pictures bring immediacy and a richness of detail as no words can.

Lastly, what is your personal opinion? Whould prefer to check on your blog from outside, or wait till you get home? And, which do you think will be used in the future?

Mobile phones will bring convenience and immediacy to the weblog experience. But I think good old desktops will remain the technology of choice for some years to come.

I think moblogging -- where bloggers post photos and impressions from the field -- will grow in importance in the coming years, although I doubt it will ever reach critical mass. The reason? A mobile phone will always be primarly a communication tool rather than a publishing device.

Finally: If you have time, you should contact Joi Ito, who has written extensively about moblogging.

A web antidote for political apathy

Wired News: In October, the BBC will launch a radical experiment in online democracy -- a website for turning ordinary citizens into grassroots political activists

Open source journalism

Dan is writing a book about We Media -- the reconceptualized role of journalism in an age when the former audience becomes participants in the news process.

It's an important work, given the roadblocks this line of thinking still faces in most traditional newsrooms. Dan showed me his first chapter a few months ago, and it's well written and right on the money.

As in any good open-source concept, Dan is inviting his weblog readers to participate in the process. Check it out.

SARS news was spread thru SMS

Dan Gillmor in his eJournal: SARS and SMS: How the News First Spread.

Blogging, journalism and standards of fairness

I'm quoted in an article, Blogging: the new journalism?, that went up today in DotJournalism.co.uk, the British equivalent of the Online Journalism Review. It's instructive, if only for how resistant traditional journalists remain to the blogging phenomenon.

The head of BBCNews.com surprisingly proves himself to be an old-schooler by claiming, "Dissemination of information is great, but how much of it is trustworthy? They (Blogs) are an interesting phenomenon, but I don't think they will be as talked about in a year's time."

Lloyd Shepherd, chief producer for Guardian Unlimited, says that both weblogs and the Drudge Report do not qualify as journalism.

And the author of the article wrongly maintains: "If journalism is by definition the reporting of news in a fair, balanced and accurate way, then blogging is not journalism."

Recently I wrote that weblogs do indeed sometimes serve as journalism, and that we need to move beyond that simplistic debate to discuss how to incorporate the advantages of blogging into mainstream media.

Because I'm often asked by reporters and students for quotes on the subject of blogging, journalism and new media, I'll include the entirety of my exchange with DotJournalism correspondent Jody Raynsford here:

To what extent do people now rely on blogging for breaking news stories or unmediated coverage of events? Do you think this differs depending on where you are based, e.g. US, UK, Iran?

Blogging wonít replace traditional news reports, but it will supplement and enhance them. Readers are flocking to online news sites by the millions for the latest news about the war in Iraq. But the story doesnít end there. They are also teeming to weblogs for skeptical analysis, critical commentary, alternative perspectives rarely seen in mainstream media, the views of foreigners, and the occasional first-person account. A handful of reporters in the Gulf region are maintaining weblogs to provide fuller, more personal and colorful reporting of what they are witnessing first-hand.

Certainly, locale plays an important role. But weblogs help to break down those traditional national, regional and institutional barriers. More than 10,000 Iranians and Persian-speaking people now maintain weblogs, a number that is increasing by 200 every day. I wrote about them here.

How can bloggers overcome the arguments regarding journalistic standards of fairness, balance and most importantly accuracy? When does breaking stories first become more important than verifying the truth of these stories before publication on the web?

Journalists arenít the only ones who know how to speak the truth. Bloggers are increasingly engaging in random acts of journalism whenever they report on events they witness first-hand or when they offer analysis, background or commentary to a newsworthy topic. Those who publish rumor and present it as fact will be burned fairly quickly. Individuals build up brands and track records just as media organizations do. Not all bloggers go the extra mile, but many are now taking the extra step of trying to verify a report by sending an email, picking up the phone or checking with a hoax site before publishing a report that may or may not be true.

For those who donít bother to check their facts, reputation filters and circles of trust in the blogosphere help weed out the nonsense. We all need to do a better job of fine-tuning our bull meters. But as journalist-blogger Ken Layne once said of the blogging masses, ìWe can fact-check your ass.î

What do you think the legal implications may be, in terms of libel and slander, if blogging takes off as a serious news source? For example, what if the allegations made couldn't then be substantiated?

Iím hopeful that many more news organizations hop on board the blog bandwagon. Libel and slander laws should apply in cyberspace just as they do in print and broadcast. Some bloggers will learn the hard way that the Internet is no shield to scurrilous accusations. I just donít happen to frequent any weblogs that play that game.

One of the things you have said about blogging is how much you enjoy the
interactivity with readers while writing an article. Just being the devil's
advocate but is the beauty of journalism not based on the information you
provide, but on the writer's individual take on the facts or situation? By
heavily involving the readers are you not denying them the opportunity of
your individual and fresh take on a subject?

Not at all. Interactivity doesnít take away anything from the writer, it just adds to the richness of the journalism process. A writer, if he or she is to be relevant in cyberspace, canít simply file a story and be done with it forever. Readers want to be involved in a dialogue about the writerís findings. They want to probe, question, challenge conclusions, toss out compliments, offer suggestions for missed avenues of exploration. Iíve heard from hundreds of writers who say the interaction with readers is the most rewarding part of their jobs. That interaction becomes even richer in the blogosphere.

What do you see as the future for weblogs, particularly those set up by the
print media with an online presence?

I believe the opportunities are enormous. The vast majority of media companies have missed the boat so far, and readers are turning to expert amateurs, people with a deep knowledge about a niche subject, and others with a flair for writing or interesting stories to tell ñ hundreds of thousands of bloggers who have become part of the media ecosystem. If the news media choose to ignore it, theyíll continue to lose a chance to connect with readers on an intimate daily basis. And theyíll become a bit less relevant with each passing day.

Webcast of tonight's journalism & blogging session

I'm told that my appearance at Berkeley tonight with Rusty Foster, founder of Kuro5hin, will be webcast. We'll be discussing why news organizations and journalists should establish weblogs. It's scheduled for 10:30 Eastern, 7:30 pm Pacific time (US).

Technology redefines journalism's role

In Sunday's San Jose Merc: Protesters relying on wireless, Web tools. Excerpt:

Over the past three days, activists created pirate radio broadcasts that streamed live on the Web and were rebroadcast at numerous sites across the world. They uploaded live video of marches to the Internet and sent hundreds of digital images of clashes with police to the Web. And they communicated on those cell phones to keep close track of one another's whereabouts.

In Monday's NY Times: Improved Tools Turn Journalists Into a Quick Strike Force. Excerpt:

Reporters covering the war in Iraq are at one with their technology as never before. Television reporters are toting hand-held video cameras and print journalists have traded the 70-pound satellite phones of the 1991 Gulf War for svelte models that can be held up to their ear. High-speed Internet lines in the desert and more satellites in the sky mean journalists can make a connection almost anywhere. As the conflict unfolds, they are tapping into the global communications grid regularly.

Random acts of the blogosphere

Nice to see my SxSW presentation about random acts of journalism is getting some traction in the blogosphere, including excerpts or mentions in McGroarty's Ink Feed, Weblogs at Harvard, JOHO, News Goat, One Hand Clapping and elsewhere.

Meantime, Tennessee journalist Bill Hobbs has a rejoinder. He concludes, as I do, that blogging is sometimes journalism, and points to examples where bloggers do a better job than the pros do.

Random acts of journalism

Beyond 'Is it or isn't it journalism?': How blogs and journalism need each other

Here are the remarks I prepared for the March 9, 2003, panel discussion on Old vs. New Journalism at the 10th annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Other panelists were Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Joshua Benton of the Dallas Morning News, Evan Smith of Texas Monthly and Matt Haughey of Metafilter.

A quick story: On Super Bowl Sunday I was one of the millions of unfortunate souls who tuned in to see Jimmy Kimmelís new show after the game. The best thing about it was a two-song set by Coldplay. I wanted to find out the names of the songs played and, naturally, abc.com, coldplay.com and the usual suspects in the online news business provided not a clue.

But a 10-second search on Google turned up Jessica, a 22-year-old blogger in Los Angeles who braved the freezing cold to attend the outdoor concert, came home and blogged it, writing about her take on the concert and providing the answer to the mystery of the missing song names. Jessica probably didnít know it, but she was committing a random act of journalism.

Those of you in what Dan Gillmor calls the former audience who are blogging this panel live ñ- if youíre dong more than a mere transcription, if youíre providing summary, synthesis, analysis or commentary, youíre committing a random act of journalism.

Weíre seeing more random and not-so-random acts of journalism taking place in the blogosphere these days. Iím constantly astounded at the breadth and depth of expert knowledge displayed by bloggers on subjects as diverse as digital media, wireless networking, copyright infringement, Internet video, and much more, all written with a degree of grace and sophistication.

Now, is all blogging journalism? If a weblog does nothing more than show off photos of your pet cat Boca, Iíll go out on a limb and say that it probably isnít journalism, unless Boca is one special cat. So not all blogging is journalism, by any stretch of the imagination. But a lot of what you read in the newspaper isnít journalism, either, at least not in the strict sense.

It is becoming clear that millions of people are turning to weblogs for news, information, commentary and entertainment -ñ just for the pure joy of taking in writing thatís vivid, vibrant, telegenic, emotion-laden, and driven by personal experience rather than the formula of detachment that deadens far too much traditional journalism.

What does it take to be an online journalist? You donít need a professional publication with a slick Web site behind you, though it doesnít hurt. All you really need is a computer, Internet connection, and an ability to perform some of the tricks of the trade: report what you observe, analyze events in a meaningful way, but most of all, just be honest and tell the truth.

All of this makes a lot of people in Big Media nervous. I worked in newspaper newsrooms for 19 years, and I think itís fair to say the attitude of most old-school journalists can be summed up in the pithy phrase, What the hell is a weblog? Or, if they have heard of blogs, they airily dismiss it, saying none of this is journalism, or at least not real journalism.

Toward a future of cross-pollination

Now, I donít share the view of some that blogging will drive news organizations out of business. When the bombs start falling in Baghdad, my first media pit stop wonít be at our young friend Jessicaís weblog. You can bet that millions of us will be tuned in to CNN or checking out the web sites of the major news organizations. But the story doesnít stop there, for the weblog community adds depth, critical analysis, alternative perspectives, foreign views, and first-person accounts, perhaps by Iraqi citizens or friends or family of U.S. military personnel.

So we need to stop looking at this as a binary, either-or choice. We need to move beyond the debate of whether blogging is or isnít journalism and celebrate its place in the media ecosystem. Instead of looking at blogging and traditional journalism as rivals for readersí eyeballs, we should recognize that weíre entering an era in which they complement each other, intersect with each other, play off one another. The transparency of blogging has contributed to news organizations becoming a bit more accessible and interactive, although newsrooms still have a long, long way to go. MSNBC and other news sites such as the Providence Journal and Christian Science Monitor have incorporated the form into their missions, with mixed success. In a small way, blogging is helping to repersonalize journalism.

Old Media may have something to offer the young turks, too, in the trust department. Bloggers who dabble in the journalistic process would do well to study the ethics guidelines and conflict of interest policies of news organizations that have formulated a set of standards derived from decades of trial and error.

But more needs to be done to make this coming together a deeper and more meaningful phenomenon. Too many newsrooms are still shrouded in veils of secrecy. If I ruled the media world, I would take a blasting cap to every single newspaper reader forum and replace them with weblogs to make the former audience a central part of the conversation about public policy, news coverage and niche subjects. If I ran a newspaper chain, Iíd hire someone plugged deeply into the blogging world, as Harvard University did recently when it lured blog pioneer Dave Winer with a fellowship to start a blog experiment.

The emerging romance between weblogs and traditional journalism will not be an easy love affair. The Washington Postís Leslie Walker recently suggested that readers will never be able to dependably rely on weblogs for news and information because bloggers donít cling to the same ìestablished principles of fairness, accuracy and truthî that traditional journalists do. An old-schooler at the London Guardian wrote dismissively, ìBlogging is not journalism. Period.î

I think, ultimately, theyíre wrong. We need to get away from the notion that journalism is a priesthood thatís inaccessible to the masses. The No. 1 rule of journalism, really, is simply this: Tell the truth. Report something as accurately and faithfully as possible. Can bloggers tell the truth? I suspect so. Over time, they build up a track record, much as any news publication does when it starts out. Reputation filters and circles of trust in the blogosphere help weed out the nonsense. We all need to fine-tune our bullshit meters. But as one someone once said of the blogging masses, ìWe can fact-check your ass.î

Whatís ahead? Keep an eye on what I think will be the next big wave: visual blogging, or multimedia personal journalism. Already, blogger Lisa Rein is bypassing the mainstream media by posting video footage of the Feb. 16 peace demonstrations in San Francisco on her weblog, complete with color commentary. She plans to be out there again this Saturday, camcorder in hand, for the next rally. In two to three years, as the tools become more widespread and cheaper, weíll see an explosion of multimedia blogging, with riveting stories of first-person reportage, reviews -- and other media forms no one has yet imagined. And that will be extremely cool.

Note: J.D. Lasica will participate in a panel discussion on whether media sites and journalists should do weblogs at 7:30 p.m. March 24 at the University of California, Berkeley. The session is designed for mid-career journalists.