THE RISE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM- PART 1Principles of News

University of North Texas

Professor Neil Foote

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Digital Media Disruption

• Traditional audiences changing• The Internet becoming more commonplace for readers/viewers to get their news

• Traditional media struggling to adapt in the “new economy”

• Newsrooms racing to keep up with news – that keeps on happening

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Bucking traditional trends

• OLD MODEL: Create content, then distribute• Creating content, making it available• Readers/viewers now collaborators

• Consumers as producers: “pro-sumers”• Creators as collaborators

• “Democratization of content” • Access to more content along with:

• Better tools to distribute content • In print, online, on air• Anytime, anywhere, any device

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“Newsmakers need to understand that the swirling eddies of news are not tiny pools on the shoreline. Information is an ocean, and newsmakers can no longer control the tide as easily as they once did.”-- Dan Gilmour, author, “We the Media – Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People” and director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State.

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The traditional model

Journalists as Content Creators

Distribute the content within a defined area

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Flipping the script

• Readers/viewers now collaborators • Consumers as producers: “pro-sumers”• Creators as collaborators

• “Democratization of content” • Access to more content along with:

• Better tools to distribute content • In print, online, on air• Triple AAA: Anytime, anywhere, any device

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The new modelReaders/Views

as Collaborators

Distribute the content anywhere, anytime, any

device

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The Interactive Audience• Now:

• Individual, personalized, direct• Email addresses for reporters• Tracking readers: Story by story

Top DownEditors toReaders

Readers in Control

Audience Participation

User-Generated Content

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Participatory Journalism

• The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.

• The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php?id=P36

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The New Model of News

Technology empowering grassroots

Information no longer leaks, it gushes

Information takes on a life of its own

Verification happens in real time

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Changing role of journalists, media

• Why wait for a newspaper or television reporter to interview me to tell my story when I could go direct?

• Get rid of the “middle man”: Editors• Readers going directly to reporters • Readers using fast growing, easy to use digital tools to speak directly to the audience you want to reach

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Mark Cuban on blogging

• Launched “Blog Maverick” in 2004

Q: What prompted the blog in the first place?

A: I was tired of reading incomplete information or misinformation about twhat I was doing in the sports media. This was one way to get the facts out.”

-- From Dan Gilmor’s “We the Media”, p. 73

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Voices on Citizen Journalism

•Dan Gilmor: Disruption is alive• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyXQATlUbs&list=

PLWs5AVkTPaJQWRzE39nw6SIm4nNZ4KrUP

•The Economist: Worst fears realized?• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRG2BZlizc

• Groundreport.com: The rise of citizen journalism – Rachel Stern discusses-

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlwMWY5PG8

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The 2004 Presidential Campaign

• Vermont Gov. Dr. Howard Dean helped transform campaigns

• His famous “campaign scream” led to his downfall:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q

• “Open source politics” Campaign workers wrote software to capture emails, wrote blogs, communicated directly with supporters, donorsSource: - From Dan Gilmor’s “We the Media”, p. 100

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How Blogs Trumped Mainstream

1. The resignation of Sen. Trent Lott, a powerful, veteran politician

- I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.— Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, Dec. 5, 2002 said during Thurmond’s 100th birthday

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How Blogs Trumped Mainstream cont.

• Lott’s support of Thurmond suggested he supported segregation, voting rights laws and lynching

• ABC News’ Ed O’Keefe and The Washington Post’ Tom Edsall wrote about remarks

• Atrios.Blogspot, TalkingPointsMemo.com, Instapundit

Source: “ ‘Big Media’ Meets the ‘Bloggers’, http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/1731_0_scott.pdf

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How Blogs Trumped Mainstream cont.

2. CBS Apology on The National Guard memo in 2004• CBS anchor Dan Rather admitted a key source had lied to the network about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service

• Story originally reported that Bush had received preferential treatment to avoid fulfilling his obligations

• Major media do stories on Rather’s original report that ran on 60 Minutes

• Powelineblog.org: Immediate begins to question the memos’ authenticity. Run by several attorneysSource: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm

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How Blogs Trumped Mainstream cont.

3. TMZ.com reports Michael Jackson’s death• In 2009, the entertainment blog reported his death – an hour before it was any media had confirmed it

• Based its sources all over L.A. – from the emergency room to Jackson’s home

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/business/media/27media.html

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Bloggers, bloggers everywhere

• Politicians running for office created their own blogs

• Partisan groups launched their own online publications (Matt Drudge’s The Drudge Report, Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memor, Markos Moulitsas’ Daily Kos, Arianne Huffington’s The Huffington Post

• Continued to grow in 2008 & 2012 presidential campaigns

Source: - From Dan Gilmor’s “We the Media”, pp. 101-2

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Gilmor: Niche Journalism Rules

• Too many campaigns, not enough reporters and not enough space

• Issues of our times “too complex, too nuanced” for major media to cover

• Perfect timing for citizen journalists to step up

• Individuals passionate about issues – more so than the masses

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“The monolithic media and its increasingly simplistic representation of the world cannot provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach consensus.”

- Joi Ito, entrepreneur/blogger in “Emergent Democracy”

Source: - From Dan Gilmor’s “We the Media”, p. 103

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‘We’ is stronger than ‘me’

•Gilmor:• Readers/viewers know more than media professionals

• Many readers, only one reporter• Readers want more than ‘half-baked’ coverage, they want the full story

• Opportunity for “big media”: Have conversations with your audience

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“More and more, journalism is going to be owned by the audience. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for pro-journalists, who wil always be there – who need to be there – to gather the facts, ask questions with some measure of discipline and pull together a larger audience.”

- Jeff Jarvis, blogger, educator and former executive Advance.net

Source: - From Dan Gilmor’s “We the Media”, p. 111

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Citizen Journalism & Breaking News…

• Virginia Tech: April 2007• Tahrir Square : July 2013• Katie Couric and the role of YouTube in citizen journalism:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySEIK-I8I-Q