Friday, December 23, 2005

Receiving an Etymologically Celestial Howard Stern? I think I first saw the phrase "terrestrial radio" when I impulsively (compulsively? obsessively?) jumped into editing the Wikipedia podcasting page last summer -- probably to fix some misrepresentations about Dave Winer's role in making the whole audio-by-Internet-subscription thing possible. Terrestrial radio? I remember stringing my high school shortwave antenna between two trees -- putting it as far from terra as I could go. Using "terrestrial" to mean "not bounced off a satellite" just felt wrong. (So would "not over an Internet Really Simple Syndication feed.") That's why I enjoyed this discussion of "retronyms," which arrived under the headline "Terrestrial radio: Don't touch that dial," in Susan Walker's "Verbal Energy" weblog RSS feed from the Christian Science Monitor. (As a bonus, I followed a link to a Pennsylvania journalist-historian's extra avocation, the Online Etymology Dictionary, which will stay on my bookmark list.) As far as Wikipedia on podcasting, I've decided it takes an even more obsessive-compulsive (and faster) editor to keep up with the constantly-shifting information, true and false, on Wiki pages. Actually, good chunks of what I've written there over the past year have stayed put, but change is to be expected when anyone can jump in and edit, and too many ignore (or never notice) the system's advice about only posting material with references that can be checked. Keeping the facts in order reminds me of another terrestrial task, named for a guy who knew more about rock and roll than Howard Stern. 4:06:42 PM    comment [] Planting new seeds in the journalism ecosystem Watch this space: citmedia.org It's a blank page right now... but it's where Dan Gillmor, a pioneer journalist-blogger, plans to build a resource to encourage -- and study -- the next wave of grassroots journalism. He'll be shuttling between a teaching position at the University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet & Society, where he'll be the latest in a series of journalist-blogger Berkman Fellows. A year ago, Gillmor quit his long-standing Silicon Valley newspaper column to further explore the new kinds of networked, non-professional journalism he had been writing about. His book, We, the Media, was probably the first attempt to explain between hard covers what "citizen journalism" or "grassroots journalism" is or could be. Now, he's preparing to launch a non-profit and non-partisan organization focused on enabling "the emergent grassroots media sphere." Here's a bit of the "why?" from his blog's announcement of the Center for Citizen Media: "I believe we need a thriving media and journalism ecosystem. We need what big institutions do so well, but we also need the bottom-up -- or, more accurately, edge-in -- knowledge and ideas of what I've called the 'former audience' that has become a vital part of the system. I'm also anxious to see that it's done honorably and in a way that helps foster a truly informed citizenry." That "former audience" phrase is one he's been using for years, and it captures the potential for interaction that online publishing has brought about -- readers who write, writers who read each other, learn from each other... and write some more. The Web can carry a first-draft to readers who comment, chip in, add expertise or observations, and help make the final document better. In fact, that was part of Gillmor's book-writing technique. And it's a technique showing up in newspapers too: Journalists with blogs asking questions that a network of bloggers respond to, or bloggers raising questions that feed an investigation by professional journalists who have the institutional support needed to devote days, weeks or months to a story. I'd like to see more of that... In fact, I'd love to teach a journalism course featuring just that kind of interaction. Call it "Rockytop Brigade 101." Let the bloggers surf, make waves, stir things up. Let the journalism students pay attention, learn, watch for tidal patterns, and take time to dive deeper. Here's another easy example of new and old media coexisting: If you'd like to hear more about all of this, grab PDF-files for a chapter or two of We, the Media from the publisher's website. You just may decide to order a more convenient copy, with all 300 pages neatly printed and bound, not a messy stack of half-stapled paper from the office laser printer. 1:29:12 AM    comment []

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