Jen McClure's Ruminations

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Journalism that Matters - Part II - From Questions to Insights, Ideas, Inspiration & Initiatives

Day Two of the Journalism that Matters gathering consisted of small group discussions, and highly interactive, action-driven workshops focused on a wide range of topics, including: how to better embrace citizen journalists in the next newsroom model, updating journalism education, encouraging youth to be more civic-minded and active, policy issues - including net neutrality and their impact on online journalism models, the development of new business models, etc.

The result was a wide range of innovative ideas, insights and some new intiatives that will occur in existing and new newsrooms over the bext several months. Here's a sample of some of the participants' comments and insights that they shared at the end of day:

"I have a new understanding that professional and citizen journalists can come together tio produce something valuable - a new king of news model."

"Journalism can transform itself from reporting only about problems to reporting on problems being solved in news ways."

"We have a plan to collaborate with citizens - especially young people to re-energize the news."

"We will start a community needs database."

"Perhaps we need a new - or more names for "citizen journalism" to take into account that it's not all what we traditionally think of as "journalism," (uploading a photo, commenting, linking,...)

"We need to train citizens who want to act as journalists."

"We need to better articulate to the public what it is that journalists do - how we do it and why it's valuable."

"Professional journalists cover stories because they are news; citizen journalists share stories because they are living them or passionate about them."

"We should think about new business models based on the idea of a community newsroom and community supported news gatheirng."

"We need to learn from those on the ground who are experimenting with new media tools and models and having success."

"With more news consumption moving online, we need to consider policy issues like net neutrality, access to to the Internet, media consolidation and structural issues."

"The role of the journalist is evolving into that of a convener of conversations among complex groups and issues. "

"We need to address this shift in journalism education and curriculum."

"We need to consider whether just the vehicle of journalism is broken or is it journalism itself that is broken?"

"The values of journalism themselves need to change as we move tofrom the 1:many model to the many:many model of journalism. That requires a new covenant."

"We need to invest in and encourage young people to be more civic-minded and engaged, and see them as leaders in this new world of journalism."

"We need to better embrace ethnic communities in new journalism models and acknowledge and address the specific interests of these groups and provide relevant content to them."

"We need to remember that this is a business."

The event ended with many participants stating their commitment to starting, supporting, collaborating on and coaching others on "next newsroom" experiments. This action addressed the primary goal of the conference, which was to:

"Pick an ideal location, and start a news organization from scratch, using the best-available technology and ideas, and without the obligations or burdens of legacy processes or infrastructure. Where will it be, what will it look like, who will own it, and how will it run."

It will be interesting to see what happens next...

Journalism That Matters Conference Seeks to Envision & Create The Next Newsroom

The first day of the Journalism That Matters conference generated many more questions than answers.

With the overarching goal of helping to create and start the "next news organization," 160+ journalists, journalism professors, traditional and new media professionals, public advocates and citizen journalists gathered at George Washington University to discuss, debate and share ideas.

The event began today with a State of the Citizen Media Update, featuring a discussion with Jay Rosen, Faye Anderson, Cody Howard, Jan Schaffer, Peggy Kuhr, Merrill Brown and Dan Gillmor.

JTM co-organizer Chris Peck opened the discussion by stating that the age of citizen journalism has resulted in a "time of chaos" for traditional news organizations. The participants were then asked to pose some questions for the panel to address. Some initial questions that arose \included:

* What is the proper mix of pro and am in the new journalism model?

* What is the best way for us to ensure accuracy and balance?

* What will the successful business model look like?

* How can we get more of the public involved? How are young people involved and how will these burgeoning models help the next generation?

* How does citizen journalism work differently when you have different sizes and types of communities?

*Should there be a code of conduct for citizen journalists?

The panel discussed these questions and others. Here's a brief recap of some of the discussion:

Jay Rosen stated, "If more people participated in the press, the press would be better off, because people have the right to own and participate in the discussions of their country. Participation is not only good, but people have the tools now and are going to use the tools they have. Readers are now writers. Everyone has the power to participate."

Dan Gillmor responded, "We're in a great place on balance - we're seeing progress. There are thousands of experiments going on around the world now, but keep in mind that there will be some failures, but there will be an enormous amount of innovation in the next few years. Certainly there are problems with discourse, thoroughness, accuracy, independence, media literacy, but if we can address those, we have a chance of getting this right. I am enormously optimistic."

Jan Schaffer commented that more than ever before there seems to be an impetus for citizens to get involved in areas that traditional journalists have left uncovered. There are very interesting experiments happening in the nonprofit world and via think tanks, she said "I am also very optimistic. I think we need to be careful about calling it "chatter." It doesn't all have to be big-J journalism to have value."

Peggy Kuhl who has trained citizen journalists commented, that through that work she discovered that there are so many ways that you can mix what is happening out there and what peoples' interests are and how they want to be involved, that we don't need to choose between traditional journalism or citizen journalism, "it's not this or that, it will be a mix."

Jay Rosen described his citizen journalism project, NewAssignment.net saying, "I'm trying to figure out if there is such a thing as an open system, an open platform in news - not expanding an existing news organization, but trying to involve the thousands of people who want to get involved. We're driving down the cost for like-minded people to find each other, share information and collaborate - a lot of people can get involved, which would have been impossible before. At the same time that we have the old systems becoming more particpatory, we have the open systems trying to learn how to become more journalistic."

He continued, "If you can design a project where the mom that has one hour or week or someone who has ten minutes or someone who blogs as a hobby, and you can accept all those forms of what are effectively civic donations, that's a great start. We don't know how all those forms will work yet to result in high-quality journalism."

"Americans have never believed that journalism ever belonged to the professionalized press. The professionals need to ask themselves - what is the stronger press - one that is owned by 'us' the professionalized press - or a shared press, and I think the smart ones know that a shared press is stronger."

Rosen asked Jan Schaffer - "What did you have to change your mind about as you went from the newsroom to what you are doing now?"

She answered that as a journalist in a newsroom several years ago there was no desire to interact with readers. "Most journalists are really uninformed about what is happening in journalism. How can we get legacy journalism to pay more attention to addressing what is happening and want to pay more attention to citizens" she asked.

Schaffer also called for "Equilibrium " - the give and the get. "If they are out of balance you won't get much. People have to get something for their participation." She asked Merrill Brown what that might be. He answered that one of the things they are focusing on is "making it easy:" to upload a photo or article, get a press pass, connect with others in the network. These are important to participating. He then asked the audience, "How concerned are you that badly run newspapers are going to fail in this country in the next fews years and what can we do about that? is that important to you - if your local daily newspaper fails or is that just part of the evolution?" The audience discussed this and one participant stated - I think it's a false question. Newspapers are not going out of business. Brown responded that he has already talked to newspapers who have asked "Shall we start by just cutting out Tuesday?"

Rosen responded, "I think it would be a good thing if some of the bad papers fail. Then we could just start over. Without a common narrative it's difficult to see how a community can exist. But people share life, they share problems, and today they are more able than ever to share information, so I am not sure that the local newspaper is necessarily the best way to do this. Some of these newspapers have been doing this so badly for so long, they deserve to die."

Leonard Witt responded that we don't necessarily have just the backfence neighborhood community anymore. We have MySpace and other networked communities. In fact, this group may be more of a community to me than my neighborhood, because this is what I am interested in."
No matter where we are, we are connected to a community.

Rosen quoted DeToqueville, saying "Newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers." This is just as true now, he said. DeToqueville was referring to the newspaper. But today we are referring to the web. That's why journalism is moving to the web.

He continued that for the first eight to nine years of the web, newspaper organizations simply re-purposed content (if they had online entities at all), showing that there was a huge misunderstanding of the web. "I don't know that we need to save newspapers. I do think we need to be concerned about news organizations."

Peggy Kuhl summed things up by saying "There is a hunger for information and news, both through traditional and nontraditional channels."

The session ended with the panel posing more questions for consideration:

From Faye Anderson: For awhile there was a debate about whether citizen journalists are journalists. Is a citizen journalist who practices journalistic principles and standards a professional or an amateur?

From Cody Howard: Where can the average news consumer go to find the truth?

From Jan Schaffer: Does there need to be a business model behind the citizen journalism movement or might it be just a part of the new volunteerism?

From Peggy Kuhl: What new skill sets do we need as we move forward?

From Dan Gillmor: If you have kids, are you teaching them to be independent thinkers?

From Jay Rosen: What are some everyday situations we encounter where we have to be journalists, where we have to 'file a report?' If we can start there, we can figure out what people already know about the naturally recurring acts of journalism.

More to come tomorrow. For more information on this conference, and to view and comment upon the proposed next newsroom business plan that will be the topic of discussion for this event, visit http://newshare.typepad.com/jtmnextnewsroom/

Thoughts on My Thesis: The Paper & the Public: The Evolving Relationship between the Public & the Press in America -- From Public Journalism to Citizen Journalism

I'm working on my masters thesis - an exploration of the the evolving relationship between the public and the press in America, via a comparison between the public journalism movement and the current development of citizen journalism.

Like so many of my colleagues, I thought it would be helpful to share my work in its early stages, so following is the intro, as it stands now. I welcome your thoughts and look forward to an enlightening discussion/debate on this topic.

Introduction

According to the Newspaper Association of America and the Audit Bureau of Circulation, as of March 31, 2007, the average circulation for daily newspapers in the United States decreased by 2.1 percent over the same period in 2006, while Sunday circulation dropped 3.1 percent over the same period. Meanwhile Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet media and market research company, reported that more than 59 million people visited newspapers’ websites during the first quarter of 2007 (37.6 percent of all active Internet users). This represents a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. Scarborough Research, a firm that researches media habits, reports that, on average, newspapers’ websites contribute to a 13.7 percent increase in newspaper audience for 25- to 34-year-olds, and a 9.2 percent increase for 18- to 24-year-olds.

But, it is newspapers’ weblogs (blogs) that have enjoyed the largest increase in readership. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, visits to the blogs of the top ten newspapers grew by 210% from December 2005 – December 2006, garnering 3.8 million unique visitors in December 2006. By contrast, total online readership at the top ten newspapers grew only 9% over the same period.

While one interpretation of these statistics could potentially fuel the debate over whether the newspaper is “dying,” what is more accurate and interesting to note is that the newspaper organization is changing – and changing dramatically. These statistics indicate that while readership of the print edition of newspapers is decreasing, newspaper organizations are successfully retaining their audience, and in some cases growing audience, particularly in the younger demographics by complementing their print offerings with an online component, especially online offerings like blogs where readers can not only read the news, but participate in the journalistic process by commenting and engaging in conversation and debate about the news and in some cases even contributing content in the form of photos and commentary, a practice called citizen journalism.

As a result of newspaper organizations’ adoption of these new communications technologies, the public’s relationship with the press continues to evolve and change. It has been argued that these new technologies threaten the future of the newspaper. But, this paper will argue that these new online tools provide newspaper organizations with the opportunity not only to preserve, but even enhance their role as an important social institution in American society.

To illustrate this assertion that newspapers have evolved over time to continue to serve the needs of society and to explore the evolving relationship between the public and the press, this paper will focus on two particular and relatively recent developments in the history of American journalism: public journalism and citizen journalism.

By examining the public journalism movement of the 1990s and the emergence of the current citizen journalism phenomenon, this paper will establish a historical context to support this thesis and explore the following questions:

• Has the relationship between the public and the press changed as a result of new media and communications technologies? If so, how?

• Is there some intersection between public journalism and citizen journalism that is emerging to create a new relationship between the public and the press?

• In this age of new media and citizen journalism, what are newspapers for?

• What does the future hold for the newspaper organization as a social institution?

Why is a comparison of public journalism and citizen journalism relevant and important to exploring these larger questions? It is relevant because this comparison represents a microcosm of the relationship between the public and the press over the course of a single generation – approximately 1988 to the present (2007). This particular historical period is important to the evolution of this relationship because it coincides with the introduction of the personal computer and the rise of the Internet. Additionally, this comparison is interesting and important to examine because public journalism demonstrates a concerted effort on behalf of the press to re-engage with the public, while citizen journalism is an effort initiated by the members of the public to get more actively involved in the journalistic process.

Celebrate Earth Day & Join Me as a Greendimes.org Member

A couple of months ago I finally got completely overwhelmed by the amount of junk mail that was coming into my home and office. I was stunned by the fact that each week my family was filling our 64 gallon recycling bin - mostly with paper products (and of course the occasional empty wine bottle, but I digress). :-)

Every year more than 100,000,000 trees are chopped down and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce junk mail. I decided to do something about it.

I researched the ways to eliminate the amount of junk mail we receive - to get our names removed from direct marketing lists and discovered many solutions, most of which can be found at stopjunkmail.org.

Ultimately I decided to join Greendimes.org. For a dime-a-day (only $36 per year), GreenDimes will reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, will help you maintain your privacy so your name doesn't get placed on more mailing lists and will plant a lot of trees on your behalf!

Greendimes has already:

- Stopped more than 276,000 pounds of junk mail
- Planted/saved 143,000+ treess
- Saved more than 707,000 gallons of water

... in the US and Canada and has plans to launch its service in the UK soon.

I don't usually tout businesses on this blog, but this one is worth an endorsement in my opinion. So, I invite you to join me as a member of Greendimes.org.

Here are some other ways we can also take better care of our earth - today on Earth Day and everyday!

* Turn your thermostat a degree lower in the winter. If every home in America did this, we'd save enough energy to power all the homes in Iowa for a year.

* Take a shorter shower. If Americans subtracted one minute from their daily showers, we'd save twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day.

* Reuse ribbon and wrapping paper. If two-thirds of Americans each saved an arm's length of ribbon this year, we could tie a bow around the earth!

These ideas are included in The Green Book, by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen, which will be available in stores and online June 19, 2007.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

A is for "Authenticity," Not "Asshole" - A Call for Civility in the Blogosphere

I've noted a disturbing trend in my blog-reading of late. Several notable bloggers aren't being responsible with their emotions or their words. In fact, they're allowing themselves to be downright mean. Insults are flying. Name-calling, accusations and harsh judgments abound.

C'mon people, being "authentic" doesn't mean you should say whatever comes into your head. And, just because you can use your blog (or podcast or online video) to say whatever you want about whomever you want, doesn't mean that you should.

Like it or not, A-list bloggers will be looked to as role models. And therefore, those A-listers who are communications professionals and are actively promoting blogging and other social media tools as a viable communications vehicle for the business world need to be especially cautious about how they themselves use the tool.

You should know better, and should be using best practices in all your communications efforts, as you are setting an example. Blogging will never be adopted widely by business if there are so many examples that prove the stereotype that blogging is just a vehicle for opinionated sniping, complaining, name-calling, undocumented accusations and profanity.

So, here is a best practice I would like to suggest: if someone offends you or misrepresents you on his or her blog, podcast, video, etc., don't start a blog storm, contact the person directly and privately to discuss it in a mature manner. We had to learn these lessons when email was a new tool: The written word can easily be misinterpreted. Don't use email to address a dispute. Don't copy people unnecessarily. Don't forward emails to people when it was assumed that the communications would be kept confidential. If we've learned those lessons with that communications vehicle, can't we reduce our learning curve with this one? Why copy the whole world when you get upset or are having a dispute with someone? Don't air your dirty laundry or that of others. Not only does no one really care, but, at least for me, seeing all that negativity pop up in my RSS reader puts a sour taint on my day.

Just because we have a new communications vehicle available to us, that doesn't mean that we should use it indiscriminately.

So, today on Stop Cyberbullying Day, let's all join together and make a vow before this mean-spiritedness gets too out of control. Let's all vow to use all of our communications channels, including blogging, for good not evil. Let's be positive and kind. Let's address our disputes appropriately and maturely. Let's set a good example, and prove that this is an important new communications vehicle that has many advantages and should be taken seriously. Thank you.

________________________________________________________________________________

If you wouldn't say it in person, why say it online?

Don't write it.
Don't forward it.
Delete cyberbullying.

This is part of the anti-cyberbullying campaign from the National Crime Prevention Council:

You can post it and other similar messages on your website.

Giovanni Rodriguez Tagged Me

My friend, colleague and SNCR Fellow Giovanni Rodriguez tagged me ... so here goes... five things you may not know about me:

1. I once spent 8 weeks on a tour bus traveling across America with "10 of America's favorite story book characters" as part of a cause-related PR campaign for Visa.

2. I used to sing in a band in NY, write music, play guitar and recorded some of my work.

3. I'm adopted. My (also adopted) brother likes to introduce me to his friends with that disclaimer ("This is my sister - we're adopted") ....hmmmm....

4. I moved to the Bay Area about a dozen years ago from NY - no plans to return! :-)

5. I was once the deputy town clerk / tax collector of Woodstock, NY.

OK - the tagging continues - :-) Elizabeth Albrycht, Lisa Fletcher, Steve Crescenzo, Mike Manuel, John Cass - it's your turn.