Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog

Friday, December 23, 2005

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.

Tennessee blogger flag: Rocky Top Brigade, TCB

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