August 08, 2006
Citizen journalism may seem revolutionary, but it follows typical media structure.
By Dante Chinni
WASHINGTON
Blogging, in and of itself, is not hard. It is a fairly simple equation of software plus a little time plus, probably, a bit of attitude - with maybe a smattering of reporting thrown in for good measure.
In other words, yes, anyone can be a journalist, but who has the time?
What someone needs to do is find a way to harness the power of all those citizen journalists and unite them into their own media organization that exists outside the mainstream world. That's exactly what Jay Rosen has in mind.
Mr. Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and author of the pressthink.com blog, has come up with an idea called NewAssignment.net. The idea is still in the formative stages, but Rosen was given $10,000 by Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.org, to give it a try, and he's written extensively about it on his pressthink blog.
NewAssignment is simple and complicated at the same time. Rosen envisions that "smart mobs" of Web users would gather tips and information. When a critical mass of data and reportage is reached, a story would be assigned to a reporter/writer who has a contract with NewAssignment. That reporter would be paid for his work, and since he's being paid, would be expected to do a thorough and professional job churning out a piece that would be posted on NewAssignment's website or websites of other clients.
The reporter's pay would come from donations on a story-by-story basis. So if you really want that piece about Wal-Mart to be done, you can fund it yourself.
Rosen acknowledges he is nowhere near a real launch date. There are still a few kinks to work out, but what about the idea as a whole?
On first consideration, the idea calls to mind the image of a bunch of villagers gathering in the town square to raise money for kerosene before paying a visit to Frankenstein. But then again, why not? Why should only mainstream media people get to decide which monster to target? Perhaps the townspeople know about a monster the town's reporters do not or will not write about.
The bigger question though - and it's one Rosen acknowledges he has to work through - is how to know when someone is being paid to lead the townspeople toward or away from a particular monster's door. The Internet is already full of false postings meant to discredit people or organizations. What's to stop an anonymous someone working for, say, Dunkin' Donuts, from posting a bunch of rumors or half-truths about Krispy Kreme in the hope of generating a nasty piece?
And if NewAssignment takes off, one can only imagine it would spawn a host of imitators - on both the political right and left - that would largely be wholly owned subsidiaries of the two major political parties, much like the old partisan press of the 1800s.
None of that means it's a bad idea, just that - like most ideas - it almost certainly will go in directions other than those intended.
What may be most interesting, though, is what the proposal says in a larger sense about the direction of journalism. While NewAssignment relies on those great democratic levelers, the Internet and citizen journalists, it actually proposes a less democratic vision of the blogosphere. Rosen says his idea is "journalism without the media," but it's actually journalism functioning within the idea of a new kind of Media - with a capital M.
After all, there will be editors. As his site says repeatedly - and correctly - Rosen thinks good editors are essential for his idea to work. And if citizen journalists agree, that in itself will be an interesting development in the changing media landscape.
It will mean that even those who decry the big media recognize there is something to the way those organizations are structured. And the new citizen journalist media age may look less like a revolution than the next step in evolution.
Eisner had a very advanced grasp of the media industry, but not of newspapers and the good they could do. Despite what he said about acquiring properties, it was not obvious to him why Disney should want an editorial vehicle like the Star. Newspapers were about the prosaic, the real and the local. Disney was about the fantastic, the imaginary, the global. It wasn't a hard decision. A year later, Dinsey sold the Star, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and two smaller newspapers. (They became part of Knight Ridder, Inc.) Having ingested a little of the press as a consequence of his Big Media buy, Eisner quickly spat out the pieces. "What do I want with them?" At the time, the Kansas City and Fort Worth properties were earning profits of about 25 percent a year. I wonder if he knew that Walt Disney himself once delivered papers for the Kanas City Star, rising at 3:30 am to work with father and brother in the family livelihood. Probably he did know. But would he want that ghost around?
I call this blog PressThink because that's the kind of work I do. The title points to forms of thought that identify "journalism" to itself-- but also to the habit of not thinking about certain things. The subatomic force that holds the pack of reporters together as they swarm around a story, there's an example of pressthink. Without it there could be no pack; the pieces would come flying apart. There is a strange energy there, holding smart people to dumb practices.
The mind of the press is under strain these days. Part of it comes from citizen critics who are gaining some of the tools to do what professional journalists have always done. Often, they don't think the way the pros do, which is fortunate... more or less. Another strain involves turnover in the technology platform on which mainstream journalism has rested for so long. The supremacy of the "one to many" media system has ended, and vastly different patterns are emerging.
Another source of strain, of course, is the gradual state of tending toward Absolute Commercialization, (AC) which is present in almost all media environments. AC is a dark force in journalism, a hollower out. It chills and empties. And a fourth strain on press thinking is there because the professional culture of the press is not as open (about journalism) as it might be, even though individual journalists are quite aware of what's happening and bear a sophisticated sense of their profession's role in it.
So "pressthink" exists. At least I say it does. The burden on PressThink is to illustrate this claim and be entertaining about it. Ideas saying what a press is for created the one we have today. Ideas about what journlism essentially is keep it the way it is. Press thinking is under pressure today and more in motion. No one knows where the next wave is supposed to come from. Key symbols are up for grabs. And "who is a journalist?" is asked with a vengeance-- especially online.
Which gets to why I call this blog PressThink, and not mediathink. Today we say media instead of "the press." But I don't recommend it. I think it was a mistake when we began to do that-- call the people who were the press something else, more modern, abstract, inclusive, elastic, and of course more commercial, The Media. This is a habit we imported into our national language, but nations can get that kind of thing wrong.
We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media. This means keeping the word press, which is antiquated. But included under its modern umbrella should be all who do the serious work in journalism, regardless of what technology they use. The people who will invent the next press in America--and who are doing it now online--continue an experiment at least 250 years old. It has a powerful social history and political legend attached. Among many sites I admire, I admire TomPaine.com on this particular point. It leaves the arrow pointing backward to Paine the troublemaking democrat and political journalist, reviving his name for symbolic purpose in the present.
By such means the press goes on.
The institution dates from the age when printing was all there was of the "mass" media. Press comprehended all of media then, but that of course was centuries ago. Today, it echoes with "freedom of the press," which is connected to free speech, which is basic to free citizens. The modern press is a carrier for public service ideals and it has an inherently political identity, even though it's always been a business too. Working for the media but within the imaginary of the press has become normal practice for tens of thousands of American journalists.
So the press is a backward glancing term. To me that's what's great about it. It points back to the history of struggle for press liberty, to the long rise of public opinion, and of course to the Constitution, a source from which The Media try to draw legitimacy. But the First Amendment actually speaks of the press. It doesn't mention media. Anyone could, but then almost no one does, uphold "freedom of the media" as a great right-- worth defending and even dying for.
Posted by Jay Rosen at August 18, 2003 04:03 PM | TrackBack |
Print
Since its arrival on the scene, the citizen journalist revolution that is so often heralded as the dawning of a new age has faced one serious and nagging problem.
Blogging, in and of itself, is not hard. It is a fairly simple equation of software plus a little time plus, probably, a bit of attitude - with maybe a smattering of reporting thrown in for good measure.
But reporting and writing a cohesive news story take time. Time is money. And while blogging can be fun, interesting, and cathartic - except for a few superstars such as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com and Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo.com - it's not exactly the road to riches.
Thus the great Catch 22 of the citizen journalist revolution: You can get around the mainstream media in terms of publishing or air time, but unless you work for a media company, it's probably hard to put a lot of effort into your work.
In other words, yes, anyone can be a journalist, but who has the time?
What someone needs to do is find a way to harness the power of all those citizen journalists and unite them into their own media organization that exists outside the mainstream world. That's exactly what Jay Rosen has in mind.
Mr. Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and author of the pressthink.com blog, has come up with an idea called NewAssignment.net. The idea is still in the formative stages, but Rosen was given $10,000 by Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.org, to give it a try, and he's written extensively about it on his pressthink blog.
NewAssignment is simple and complicated at the same time. Rosen envisions that "smart mobs" of Web users would gather tips and information. When a critical mass of data and reportage is reached, a story would be assigned to a reporter/writer who has a contract with NewAssignment. That reporter would be paid for his work, and since he's being paid, would be expected to do a thorough and professional job churning out a piece that would be posted on NewAssignment's website or websites of other clients.
The reporter's pay would come from donations on a story-by-story basis. So if you really want that piece about Wal-Mart to be done, you can fund it yourself.
Rosen acknowledges he is nowhere near a real launch date. There are still a few kinks to work out, but what about the idea as a whole?
On first consideration, the idea calls to mind the image of a bunch of villagers gathering in the town square to raise money for kerosene before paying a visit to Frankenstein. But then again, why not? Why should only mainstream media people get to decide which monster to target? Perhaps the townspeople know about a monster the town's reporters do not or will not write about.
The bigger question though - and it's one Rosen acknowledges he has to work through - is how to know when someone is being paid to lead the townspeople toward or away from a particular monster's door. The Internet is already full of false postings meant to discredit people or organizations. What's to stop an anonymous someone working for, say, Dunkin' Donuts, from posting a bunch of rumors or half-truths about Krispy Kreme in the hope of generating a nasty piece?
And if NewAssignment takes off, one can only imagine it would spawn a host of imitators - on both the political right and left - that would largely be wholly owned subsidiaries of the two major political parties, much like the old partisan press of the 1800s.
None of that means it's a bad idea, just that - like most ideas - it almost certainly will go in directions other than those intended.
What may be most interesting, though, is what the proposal says in a larger sense about the direction of journalism. While NewAssignment relies on those great democratic levelers, the Internet and citizen journalists, it actually proposes a less democratic vision of the blogosphere. Rosen says his idea is "journalism without the media," but it's actually journalism functioning within the idea of a new kind of Media - with a capital M.
After all, there will be editors. As his site says repeatedly - and correctly - Rosen thinks good editors are essential for his idea to work. And if citizen journalists agree, that in itself will be an interesting development in the changing media landscape.
It will mean that even those who decry the big media recognize there is something to the way those organizations are structured. And the new citizen journalist media age may look less like a revolution than the next step in evolution.
•
Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, writes a twice-monthly column on media issues. E-mail him at: Dante Chinni.
Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, writes a twice-monthly column on media issues. E-mail him at: Dante Chinni.
Related Link:
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PressThink: An Introduction
Today we say media instead of "the press." But it's a mistake. The press has become the ghost of democracy in the media machine, and we need to keep it alive.
In 1996, when Disney bought ABC, it came into possession of a few daily newspapers, which were owned by Capital Cities, which owned ABC. One of them was the Kansas City Star. Someone prevailed on Disney boss Michael Eisner, and in March of that year he went to Kansas City to speak to the Star staff. They were nervous. Disney on the city desk?
According to the account that ran in the Star, it went okay: "First question: Will Disney sell the Star? No; Disney likes acquiring properties, not selling them, Eisner said. While nothing is guaranteed forever, he made it clear he'd rather buy than sell. Someone asked what he liked and didn't like about the paper. He deferred, saying he's not an expert on newspapers."
Eisner had a very advanced grasp of the media industry, but not of newspapers and the good they could do. Despite what he said about acquiring properties, it was not obvious to him why Disney should want an editorial vehicle like the Star. Newspapers were about the prosaic, the real and the local. Disney was about the fantastic, the imaginary, the global. It wasn't a hard decision. A year later, Dinsey sold the Star, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and two smaller newspapers. (They became part of Knight Ridder, Inc.) Having ingested a little of the press as a consequence of his Big Media buy, Eisner quickly spat out the pieces. "What do I want with them?" At the time, the Kansas City and Fort Worth properties were earning profits of about 25 percent a year. I wonder if he knew that Walt Disney himself once delivered papers for the Kanas City Star, rising at 3:30 am to work with father and brother in the family livelihood. Probably he did know. But would he want that ghost around?
I am a press critic, an observer of journalism's habits, and also a writer trying to make sense of the world. I am interested in the ideas about journalism that journalists work within, and those they feel they can work without. I try to discover the consequences in the world that result from having the kind of press we do.
I call this blog PressThink because that's the kind of work I do. The title points to forms of thought that identify "journalism" to itself-- but also to the habit of not thinking about certain things. The subatomic force that holds the pack of reporters together as they swarm around a story, there's an example of pressthink. Without it there could be no pack; the pieces would come flying apart. There is a strange energy there, holding smart people to dumb practices.
The mind of the press is under strain these days. Part of it comes from citizen critics who are gaining some of the tools to do what professional journalists have always done. Often, they don't think the way the pros do, which is fortunate... more or less. Another strain involves turnover in the technology platform on which mainstream journalism has rested for so long. The supremacy of the "one to many" media system has ended, and vastly different patterns are emerging.
Another source of strain, of course, is the gradual state of tending toward Absolute Commercialization, (AC) which is present in almost all media environments. AC is a dark force in journalism, a hollower out. It chills and empties. And a fourth strain on press thinking is there because the professional culture of the press is not as open (about journalism) as it might be, even though individual journalists are quite aware of what's happening and bear a sophisticated sense of their profession's role in it.
So "pressthink" exists. At least I say it does. The burden on PressThink is to illustrate this claim and be entertaining about it. Ideas saying what a press is for created the one we have today. Ideas about what journlism essentially is keep it the way it is. Press thinking is under pressure today and more in motion. No one knows where the next wave is supposed to come from. Key symbols are up for grabs. And "who is a journalist?" is asked with a vengeance-- especially online.
Which gets to why I call this blog PressThink, and not mediathink. Today we say media instead of "the press." But I don't recommend it. I think it was a mistake when we began to do that-- call the people who were the press something else, more modern, abstract, inclusive, elastic, and of course more commercial, The Media. This is a habit we imported into our national language, but nations can get that kind of thing wrong.
We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media. This means keeping the word press, which is antiquated. But included under its modern umbrella should be all who do the serious work in journalism, regardless of what technology they use. The people who will invent the next press in America--and who are doing it now online--continue an experiment at least 250 years old. It has a powerful social history and political legend attached. Among many sites I admire, I admire TomPaine.com on this particular point. It leaves the arrow pointing backward to Paine the troublemaking democrat and political journalist, reviving his name for symbolic purpose in the present.
By such means the press goes on.
The institution dates from the age when printing was all there was of the "mass" media. Press comprehended all of media then, but that of course was centuries ago. Today, it echoes with "freedom of the press," which is connected to free speech, which is basic to free citizens. The modern press is a carrier for public service ideals and it has an inherently political identity, even though it's always been a business too. Working for the media but within the imaginary of the press has become normal practice for tens of thousands of American journalists.
So the press is a backward glancing term. To me that's what's great about it. It points back to the history of struggle for press liberty, to the long rise of public opinion, and of course to the Constitution, a source from which The Media try to draw legitimacy. But the First Amendment actually speaks of the press. It doesn't mention media. Anyone could, but then almost no one does, uphold "freedom of the media" as a great right-- worth defending and even dying for.
Ghost of democracy in the media machine. That's the press today. My sense is that Michael Eisner knew that. What's yours?
Posted by Jay Rosen at August 18, 2003 04:03 PM | TrackBack |
PrintA splendid manifesto, and an ambitious agenda. How do we explode pressthink and send the pieces flying apart in more interesting directions? Or is the fact that so many journalist already realize that they work by way of or alongside pressthink suggest that the energy to change things can't come from within the media--excuse me, the press? Dumping the term "media" alone is a great first move.
Posted by: Jeff Sharlet at September 11, 2003 11:38 AM | Permalink
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
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