July 30th, 2007
It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism
NowPublic has taken a big round of financing and, according to Mathew Ingram, was in a position to turn down acquisition offers. This is being hailed as the success of “citizen journalism” or “crowdsourcing,” but it strikes me that it’s really just the success of….journalism.
The words we use to describe things can have a powerful effect on how we perceive them — George Orwell observed this in Politics and the English Language.
I think there is a battle going on over control of the word “journalism.”
Many people in the news business seem to have a vested interest in separating journalism as it has traditionally been practiced, by employees of news organizations that controlled monopoly distribution channels, from “citizen journalism” or “crowdsourcing” or anything else that represents the evolution of journalism in a networked media world.
So we have “serious, traditional” journalism over HERE, and all this experimenting with “citizens” and “crowds” and whatnot over THERE.
Well, it’s time to call foul on this. NowPublic and other sites like it are doing JOURNALISM — the practice of journalism hasn’t been fundamentally changed so much as it has been extended. Journalism used to be linear. Now it’s networked. It used to be in the hands of a few. Now it’s in the hands of many more.
It makes no sense to call people contributing to NowPublic CITIZEN journalists, unless the intent is to qualify their identity in order to set them apart from “real” journalists.
Now that doesn’t mean we can’t use qualifies like “good” and “bad.” People with less EXPERIENCE in the practice of journalism may be more likely to produce BAD journalism. But that’s also true of rookie reporters working for mainstream news organizations. This is an issue of training, and experienced full-time journalists are in just as much need of training on how to adapt to a networked media age as journalists contributing part-time to NowPublic may be in need of training in how to act responsibly and manage the gathering and dissemination of news.
Now Public’s CEO Len Brody also takes issue with the nomenclature (via GigaOm):
“If you go to NowPublic, you will never ever see the term citizen journalism mentioned,” said Brody. “Telling someone they’re going to be a citizen journalist is like telling people they’re going to be a citizen dentist — most people view it as a profession and art form.” NowPublic’s preferred term is “crowd powered.”
I have to take issue with the word “crowd” as well, because the connotations aren’t positive:
crowd - noun
1. a large number of persons gathered closely together; throng: a crowd of angry people.
And “crowd-powered” terminology again puts up a barrier between journalism being practiced at NowPublic and journalism being practiced on mainstream news sites, when in fact they exist on a continuum.
The future of journalism depends on collaboration, not silos and fiefdoms. Journalism with a capital J needs to maintain standards but it also, desperately, needs to evolve in order to thrive as in a networked media age.
Being a journalist and practicing journalism is no longer strictly a function of where you work — it’s a function of what you do — and how well you do it. Not everyone who publishes on the web is acting journalistically — VERY far from it. But we need to embrace the reality that not all the people practicing journalism, for better or worse, are working for traditional news organizations.
We still need to recognize where people are doing great journalism, and we still need to criticize bad journalism.
But we need to recognize the larger sphere that journalism now occupies and the larger group of people who are now acting as journalists — and we need to help them all succeed for the greater good that journalism, in its ideal, has always been about.
Powered by 
Design by 
+ Discussion: Insider Chatter, reportonbusiness.com, howardowens.com, WebProNews, mathewingram.com/work, Publishing 2.0, The Globe and Mail, Associated Press, Mashable!, BuzzMachine, Lost Remote and paidContent.org
We’re All Journalists Now: Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 wonders if there’s any distinction between “old” journalism and “new” journalism any more.
We’re All Journalists Now: Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 wonders if there’s any distinction between “old” journalism and “new” journalism any more.
already built a sizeable user base, with 20,000 hardcore users helping draw over 1 million unique visitors a month. But God Damn I’m long-winded. This isn’t even what I wanted to post about. I wasn’t planning on commenting on the news until I read a provocative post by Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0. In the title Karp declares: “It’s not citizen journalism or crowdsourcing—It’s just journalism.” Like hell, I thought, having recently decompressed from my own sometimes rocky foray into
The future of journalism depends on collaboration, not silos and fiefdoms. Journalism with a capital J needs to maintain standards but it also, desperately, needs to evolve in order to thrive as in a networked media age.” - Scott Karp
It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism » Publishing 2.0
There’s only two types of journalism: good journalism and bad journalism [ma.gnolia]
There’s only two types of journalism: good journalism and bad journalism »
It will be interesting to see how the debate plays out. Hopefully hyperlocal and hyperpersonal will manage to avoid the “Guantanamo mentality” of trying to define and exploit audiences and give everyone pause for more reflection on just how it helps define our (hyper)personal and (hyper)local relationships
Well said.
At Zimbio, we definitely still get tripped up by all the terminology. At the end of the day we consider ourselves a collaborative media company that tries to combine member and traditional media in unique ways (in our case, to create online magazines). But the key learning for us has been that our readers just want good, relevant articles, and nice pictures - the rest of this is basically just noise to them. If they like a story, they’ll stick around. If not, they’ll flock.
So the challenge - at our stage anyways - is in appropriately segmenting the marketing message and visual real estate between writers (who want to appreciate that their voice has influence) and readers (who just want a good read and can get turned off by too much of everything else).
It’s not always obvious to us how to balance this.
[…] citizen journalism - just journalism Jump to Comments Now this I disagree with. A piece by Scott Karp argues that the ‘new wave’ of crowdscourced news is nothing new - it’s just […]
Author - “Journalism used to be linear. Now it’s networked. It used to be in the hands of a few. Now it’s in the hands of many more.”
Orwell - “When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
[…] (which I actually kind of like). He says that what is going on at NowPublic is just journalism, period — or perhaps “networked journalism,” which Jeff Jarvis suggested as an […]
[…] (which I actually kind of like). He says that what is going on at NowPublic is just journalism, period — or perhaps “networked journalism,” which Jeff Jarvis suggested as an […]
[…] would like to associate myself with the following remarks from Scott Karp: Many people in the news business seem to have a vested interest in separating journalism as it has […]
Journalism is dead. It was a cult that began in the early 20th century by Walter Lippmann, and its followers have believed in fantasies like their own objectivity, their infallibility in the use of the non-existent discipline of “verification” to deliver “truth, ” and the “public’s right to know,” which was never anything more than the journalists’ right to say anything they damned well pleased whether their employers liked it or news customers wanted it. The Pew Center is its church and Bill Moyers is its Jesse Jackson. We don’t have a word for what will replace journalism yet, but we will soon. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
I do think there’s a difference, though, in the ways people are approaching this ‘new new journalism.’ (Darn you Wolfe for calling it that too early. Heh.)
I like to call what I do ‘grassroots journalism.’ Makes more sense to me and better describes what I’m doing - a bottom-up, horizontal, people powered approach.
-kpaul
Myself, I’m looking forward to citizen paramedics in the forthcoming world of networked medicine. Hey, if you can put on a Bandaid …
[…]I wasn’t planning on commenting on the news until I read a provocative post by Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0. In the title Karp declares: “It’s not citizen journalism or crowdsourcing—It’s just journalism.” Like hell, I thought, having recently decompressed from my own sometimes rocky foray into “crowdsourced journalism.” I knew it hadn’t resembled anything else in my nearly two decades of journalism. But Karp won me over.[…]
I don’t know whether journalism is dead but I’ve always felt appending the word “Citizen” to anything was a little sinister. Always makes me think of Robespierre or Stasi apartment block janitors…
I think Danny and Jeff got it correct.
It doesn’t really matter what you call yourself. What matters is the story. Write a good story that’s well reported and relevant, and you are golden.
I just happen to think that the traditional model of makes for better stories. Reporters and editors working together to put together a decent story isn’t exactly a “cult,” although sometimes it pays the same.
[…] It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism. Scott Karp argues, in part, that the only modifiers we should be applying to journalism are “good” and “bad,” not “citizen” or “crowd.” Journalism is an act, not an occupation. […]
[…] It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism » Publishing 2.0 “So we have “serious, traditional” journalism over HERE, and all this experimenting with “citizens” and “crowds” and whatnot over THERE.” (tags: internet participatory journalism citizenmedia language) […]
[…] It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism, Publishing 2.0, July 30, 2007. […]
[…] everything that anyone chooses to publish — it is a definable, value-creating PRACTICE. And journalists are ALL of its practitioners, whether they call themselves journalists, whether they acknowledge the larger group they are now a […]
Journalism has little to do with the media, more with a practice of looking for facts and providing information that is as accurate and objective as possible. That can happen on a blog, it can happen in a fanzine, it can happen in a daily newspaper - or not.
Indeed, there shouldn’t be a proprietary right to the term, but there has to be a distinction between just rambling on and throwing out opinions in a don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts-my-mind-is-made-up type of approach, on the one hand, and actually trying to make sense of the world around us and sharing that with an audience, on the other.
It has to do with being part of the “reality-based” community, as a Bush White House aide famously told a journalist from the NY Times. The aide was being condescending. Tends to explain a few things…
[…] A whereIstand.com community member has posted evidence of the opinion of this public figure. Only registered users can vote on pending evidence. If the evidence is approved, the verified opinion of the public figure will be displayed. pendingEvidence that the opinion of Scott Karp is: Neutral”But we need to recognize the larger sphere that journalism now occupies and the larger group of people who are now acting as journalists — and we need to help them all succeed for the greater good that journalism” Posted on 3/18/2008 3:18 PM by MikeDApprove (5) | Reject (3) | My vote: None Karp makes the argument that "citizen" generated or no, the stories being published need to adhere to the standards of journalism. From Publishing 2.0: […]