January 25th, 2006
Who Will Fund the Greater Good?
The reactions to Dan Gilmor’s open letter on Bayosphere have fallen into two camps — lessons on start-ups and lessons on the dynamics of citizen journalism.
These perspectives, while important, miss the critical question in middle — who will fund citizen journalism, or any journalism, for that matter? As Justin Fox puts it in his must-read Fortune piece, Out with old media; in with… what?, “Are Americans willing to pay for what’s good for them?”
If it’s everyone for themselves in a free market of distributed content, is the free market going to value journalism (citizen orotherwise) enough to pay for it? Is the free market going to pay for community reporting, much less muckraking and correspondents in war zones? To me, the big issue that Bayosphere raises is not about start-ups but about who’s going to be minding the store of the “greater good” in journalism after we’ve destroyed the old economic model that funded it.
I worry that if we follow the online start-up model and embrace the practice of citizen journalism while putting the business model off until later, the entire practice of citizen journalism will be limited to the world of non-profit and its limited reach, which is not inherently a bad thing, but it’s hard to have a revolution when nobody hears about it.
And do we really want a Wall Street-like free market directing the creation and distribution of content? Do we want the world of “mass-reach” content to reflect the inane dross that often shows up on Reddit? — that’s what you get when you let the market/people decide. Or, as the NYTimes points, you get MySpace:
For better or worse, the media world of the future may well be Wayne’s. There is no better way to see this than to venture into MySpace.com, a jungle of clashing colors, blasting sounds, lurid images and banter so dense that anyone over 25 quickly becomes lost. The lesson here is that on MySpace there is no distinction between personal and mass media. A teenager can post a photo from last night’s party, a poem for a lost boyfriend, buttons that play her favorite song and a clip from her favorite TV show.
Justin raises the prospect of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting being the sole entity funding journalism for the public good — do we really want all journalism to be in the hands of a Congressionally funded entity? NPR makes independent non-profit funding go a long way, but there’s only so much to go around.
While I respect Dan Gillmor’s decision, it should be a wake-up call to the citizen journalism movement — Web 2.0 has shown that publishing in the hands of VCs and technology companies does a poor job of serving the average consumer. If citizen journalists can build a better app to help the average person stay informed without drowning in media, the world, and the money, will beat a path to their door.
Topics: Blogging | Blogs | Citizen Journalism | Journalism | Media Economics | New Media
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Here’s the real issue from Fox’s column: in order to discover a song that Fox liked, he needed to stumble across it in a commercial. Hear it on the radio? Ho ho, I don’t think so.
Web 2.0 isn’t the only one that’s done a poor job of serving the average consumer. Lowry Mays and Lewis Dickey, please step forward.
David, music is the extreme example, with Apple, satellite radio, and streaming music online stepping in to bust the cartel of record companies and Clear Channel.
But when it comes to news — and especially journalism — things get a lot more complicated.
The Challenges of Citizen Journalism
Content
Although this may seem obvious, the proper selection, timing and staging of content is a delicate and complicated task. It is not random. Participatory journalism is still presumably journalism, and requires discipline of vision like any other worthwhile endeavor.
Passion
The fuel which drives any great work is passion for something, someone, some place, etc. Without this vital ingredient, inane and banal ramblings masquerade for the genuine article. It is precisely this form of passionless journalism which drives audiences away from mainstream media, in search of “something real.”
Capability
We all have different skills, and not everyone is equally gifted in the art of expression. The challenge is to enable those who desire a voice but can’t quite sing yet. This requires a drive to achieve and a submission to the discipline required to get there on the part of the would-be Citizen Journalist. In other words, one must become a “humble student” in order to truly learn anything of value, especially how to be a great journalist.
Credibility
Everyone has an opinion, sometimes more than one. However, not everyone has the depth of background and experience to offer a valuable opinions which can add substance to a topic of discussion. Many popular journalists are cast, for better or worse, into a “pundit” role over the course of their years in covering specific topics with some depth. This doesn’t mean we should ignore fresh new insights, but if those insights waste the audience’s time by not providing value, then the whole effort is on shaky ground.
Accountability
Screaming “fire” in a crowded theatre is ok if there really IS a fire. However, anonymous “bomb throwers” who engage in so-called ‘yellow journalism’ destroy the overall integrity of a publication, not to mention open it up for libel and slander. Defamation is not a valid form of promotion, and accountability of reporting and reporters holds this problem in check, although it doesn’t completely eliminate the more subtler forms.
Compensation
In most societies, “Time is Money” and Citizen Journalists, even fledgling ones, need to be properly compensated for their efforts if those efforts are to continue. Hobbies are just that: hobbies. In order to break through to a higher level of quality, there needs to be a fair system of compensation or the term “Citizen Journalist” will become synonymous with “Unemployed Journalist.”
Leadership
The role of the editor should be emphasized here. Without editorial direction, guidance and oversight, it is hard to deliver a quality publication. Even high school yearbooks have editors, and online publications are no different. There are various editorial styles and orientations, but they all share common journalistic ethics which define and shape the publication. Without this editorial leadership, whether it is in the form of an editor-in-chief or an editorial staff, the publication in question may never see its second issue. Perhaps this is just editorial Darwinism at work.
Conclusions
Great journalism is hard … sloppy journalism isn’t really journalism at all. And Citizen Journalism is quite challenging!
heavyweights going to acknowledge that FuckedCompany.com was the real innovator and that they should abandon their love affair with old media to fully embrace the new? I see a lot of articles asking the question , but no one seems to know it has been answered already.
[…] I would not be surprised to learn that there are independent voices already reporting from the front, who have risked their lives for their principles. But can their work continue if we tear down all of the media institutions? As I’ve asked before, who will fund the public good? […]