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29 Sep 09

"Fact and Friction" Interview with Jay Rosen in Volume » Page not found

Great interview with Jay Rosen (conducted by Jeffey Inaba and Talene Montgomery) that delves into (and knits together) the "pro" (professional) and "am" (amateur, blogger) divide. Rosen advocates for Pro-Am journalism. And what is "the public"?

"How do journalists decide how to tell stories? What are their responsibilities when reporting a story? And to what extent do they write in the public’s interest?"

The questions revolve around whether journalists represent or create the public.

volumeproject.org/...7715 - Preview

jay_rosen jeffrey_inaba journalism volume_magazine citizen_journalism politics talene_montgomery

people involved in arts, culture, education and politics, have to figure out continually how to bring the public alive.’ It’s not just a question of information either, its also one of art. Because engaging people successfully is a social problem we have to figure out. So to me, yes, the public is there to be informed and it is something we have to bring to life. There’s no objective way of doing it; it’s an art and a commitment. I think really good journalists who care about telling the truth, who care about their stories and about having an effect are really saying, ‘I’m going to awaken the public’.
JR: Journalists have a responsibility to tell us what’s going on and tell us the truth and that does require impartiality. We know this from our normal lives. It doesn’t require you to be a journalist. If you went to a contentious meeting – and other people who also have a stake in what you have witnessed couldn’t go and they ask you what went on – you have a responsibility to report to the other people accurately and impartially. Yet you have other responsibilities too. People want to know not just what occurred, but also how they can affect things. Their participation and their power to affect the situation has something to do with their interest in information and there’s a vital connection between those two things.
6 more annotations...
- JR: The great press critic AJ Liebling once famously said about freedom of the press, ‘Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one’. And blogging means anyone can own one. That is a switch and 'citizen journalism' is simply a name for this fact. People have the tools and therefore they also have the powers of the press. Citizen journalism is when ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’ pick up these tools and use them to inform one another.
- First: we need verified information. The most important reason for having professional journalism is it represents a verification system we otherwise would not have. The essence of what they do is not just that they report stuff, but that they report stuff that's verifiable.
- Second: there are some kinds of stories – investigative journalism, for example – that you can only get if somebody is working on them full-time. Finding out facts requires somebody working on it. That argues for professional journalism. There's a whole class of things for which that is true.
- Third: we need people with power, including and especially people in government, to provide access to the public itself. But it's not practical for them to provide access to the public at large, so we need representative figures to pose questions. And obviously that, in a practical way, argues for people who have that access, because certain stories can only be gotten that way!
- So what is citizen journalism good at? We don't necessarily know entirely yet, because we haven't built good structures for it. But one of the things that it's good at – which really comes from blogging – is that having people who really care about issues guide you to news about those issues is actually a better way of learning about them than depending on, say, the LA Times. What's great about citizen journalism is that it is born from participation and it is created for your participation. The bloggers have been the ones – like amateurs in other new arts – who have actually pushed the craft forward. They’re the ones who learned to write with links; they’re the ones who learned to take the freedoms of the web – which are vast – and bring enough discipline to them through forms that make blogging intelligible.
- JR: I'm interested in this thing people are calling Pro-Am journalism. [1] Ultimately the strongest forms and the best discoveries will be made with ‘pro’ journalists working with networks of amateurs, connected through smart web tools and applications and motivated to produce new information.

17 Dec 08

Citizen journalism will shape the new face of the Oakland Press - The Oakland Press Opinion: The best place for news in and around Oakland County

Must read later; filed for now.

theoaklandpress.com/...doc4944876017642127238243.txt - Preview

oakland citizen_journalism newspapers

26 Feb 08

Here's one reason students Barack the vote: respect - Crosscut

Wow, and wow again! U-Dub communications prof David Domke describes how his citizen-journalist blogger students were treated by the politicians campaigning for president, and the difference between Hillary & Barack are astounding.

One of Domke's students, Jennifer Ware, describes it like this: "John McCain spoke in Seattle (the same day) to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5,000 at a waterfront pier (on February 7). Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics; it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race."

Domke adds, further down: "It seems that the take-home point here is this: The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk."

Obama for President!

www.crosscut.com/...nts+Barack+the+vote%3A+respect - Preview

blogging citizen_journalism clinton obama politics presidency respect seattle

And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.
6 more annotations...
- When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. "Yes" she said, "Washington, it’s right next to Virginia."
  - Holy cow... - on 2008-02-26
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- Every single person I’ve dealt with from the Obama campaign was upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn’t initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama’s speech, and a reporter from The Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, 'I’m just a volunteer from Shoreline, I’ve never done this before, please bear with me.' Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at KeyArena, they did it with purpose, not burden.
- John McCain spoke in Seattle (the same day) to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5,000 at a waterfront pier (on February 7). Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics; it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.
- When my students had trouble reaching the Clinton campaign in the run-up to the caucuses, I made a call to her national office. I figured that maybe they’d respond to a UW professor better than a student — which would be an error on their part, but still one that we might use to help our coverage. I told them we were having trouble reaching people — anyone — on the ground in Washington state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton’s event in Seattle received a response. They assured me I’d hear from them. I emphasized my point a second time. They kindly repeated that I would certainly hear from people on the ground here.
  I’m still waiting for that call.
- The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest University, and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.
- It seems that the take-home point here is this: The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.
  It suggests to me that the Obama campaign’s appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It’s a campaign that treats young people like full adults. And across Washington state, Obama crushed Clinton, defeating her in every county in the state. It’s been a pattern repeated in every contest since.