As everyone steps up to applaud the “citizen journalism” that occurred yesterday, with kudos upon kudos give to the cellphone video made infamous by CNN, I can’t help but think what my student’s brother thought yesterday upon seeing that video played over and over and over again.
Consider this: the video had no inherent news value and told no story.
It did have sounds of bullets being fired and screams.
Those were bullets that killed, maimed and injured students and faculty members. This wasn’t a video game.
Is such video responsible journalism? Are these the types of Citizen Journalists that people want to see? Are we doomed to create “citizen journalists” to play the I-patsies for cable television?
There were other not-so-proud moments, including the decision to publish this and then the rush to judgment reported here.
As most professional journalists who have covered breaking news and tragedy know, the facts are never clear in the first couple of hours and will likely change. And, when reporting on tragedy, two things rise above most — try not to do harm and think of those involved — both victims and their families. It means slowing down. And, thinking, should I really whip out my cellphone here?
Cable television long ago threw out the baby with the bath water. Now, breaking news events are an opportunity for ratings as viewers watch tragedy unfold. Journalism? Hardly. Students who were in shock were interviewed regularly, with the final question of “how are you feeling” inevitably searching for a sob. Watching tragedy unfold via cable news is the soap opera of the modern era. It’s hardly journalism.
Which brings us back to our heralded cell-phone videographer yesterday. The London bombing showed us how anyone with a cell phone can capture images. But, that was after a news event had occurred. Our heralded citizen journalist captured sounds of people being killed, injured and maimed yesterday as it occurred.
Is this really the type of behavior to applaud, to train citizen journalists to take part in? More importantly, what’s the news here?
Finally, step back for a second. Play the video. And, imagine you have a son or daughter attending Virginia Tech, you can’t get ahold of them and you turn on CNN to find out some information and instead you come across that video.
The Web changed everything. As an editor at The Washington Post’s Web site for 10 years, I saw the audience become more and more involved in the process. Readers who could quiz editors and newsmakers in live discussions can now e-mail editors and reporters directly with story ideas and comments.
The comments board on most blogs on the Web is the Wild Wild West — allowing readers to offer their thoughts on content and writing. Anyone can start a blog and citizen journalism has become much more than discussion fodder for conferences. The London bombings demonstrated how anyone with a cell phone is capable of reporting on events.
Today, citizen journalism takes a step forward with the unveiling of Assignment Zero. After years of hearing the internal journalistic debates of “who is a journalist,” Jay Rosen proposed last year to bring together the best qualities of professional journalists and citizen journalists under one umbrella. He then assembled an amazing team of editors, developers and designers who spent the last several months making his vision reality.
It’s a simple concept recently, one Jay dubbed “pro-am journalism.” Assignment Zero will use the crowd to do much of the traditional legwork needed to do go reporting — the first story will examine the history and practice of crowdsourcing. The crowd will be assisted by professional editors and the final product will run on Wired, New Assignment and elsewhere on the Web.
The theory is that by using a large pool of reporters, you get more sourcing, more anecdotes, better reporting, and ultimately, a better story.
Some have warned me not to oversell the concept. But it’s hard not to get excited over this revolutionary approach to journalism. Imagine using this setup to examine larger issues — education, poverty, foreign policy. The sky’s the limit.
I remember back when I was reporting how readers would often be frustrated by their inability to impact the journalistic process. More than once I would hear laments that letters to the editor was the only way for readers to offer thoughts and comments on the process.
Those days are gone. The closed doors have been opened. Not only do you, the reader, get to be a part of the process, but we’re inviting you in and allowing you to pick how you want to be involved. We’re listened and we’ve responded. Go check out Assignment Zero. Journalism will never be the same.
Curley and his team of developers have been fairly quiet since their arrival in Washington last October. This week, washingtonpost.com unveiled a big video project titled onBeing and it’s got Curley’s fingerprints all over it. The “cool” stuff that Curley is known for includes being able to go the ITunes page for the feature, and being able to download the package to a host of other platforms — including your PSP player or your video phone. The video, conceived and shot by washingtonpost.com videographer Jennifer Crandall, is high quality — no surprise there given the pool of multimedia talent at The Post.
There is a sort of reverse narrative at work with the video essay. Users get very little information when you click into the project; you’re given a short intro box and then four faces. You click on one and then listen to an interview, although it’s not really an interview — more like a person talking to you about, well, whatever. So, I randomly click on the Asian woman, her name pops up and then I listen to about 2 minutes of her talking about cheese. The title of the piece comes at the end: “On being a cheesemaker.”
Then another cool thing pops up — a comments area overlays on top of the video, with comments from Crandall and users. The text from Crandall includes this: “Not too long ago, she survived a brain tumor which explains her mandate to do whatever the hell she wants to in life.” Interesting. All of a sudden I understood why this person’s story should be worth my while. But it took time.
So, what is this? Inverting the inverted pyramid? Blowing up the inverted pyramid altogether? It’s an interesting approach. High up on the cool factor. But, how many people bailed after 30 seconds of the cheese rant? As my old boss used to tell me: “Get them engaged early and keep them engaged.”
The journalistic storytelling experiment is admirable and very much in the traditions of Web journalism. But what makes me wonder about the success of this project is it’s premise, which is spelled out in the introduction: “onBeing is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better.”
The press release announcing the project states: “People can’t get enough visual content. In keeping true to this
emerging trend, washingtonpost.com today unveiled a compelling new multimedia feature, “onBeing,” that presents the musings, attitudes, passions and quirks of people in a unique, documentary style. Leveraging the strengths of the Web, “onBeing” features extremely
insightful and intimate storytelling filmed in a simple, uncomplicated manner.”
Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com’s executive editor, is jazzed about the project because it’s an attempt to get away from the tried and true. “We focus so much on the famous and the infamous in the paper and on the site, and this feature is intended to give our readers a chance to meet folks with interesting professions, stories or personalities and then share their own thoughts,” says Brady.
There is an attempt to build community here, one with fairly altruistic goals. But, even the 60s had a peg. Granted, it was sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll but it united people against the man. Getting to “know one another a little better”? Seems too lofty…
As one of my old bosses used to say, it’s content that drives the bus. Getting to know parents of high school football players in the Washington region? Now, that’s building community. That’s what’s missing here. You need a hook to tie people together. What has made social networking on the Web so successful are those underlying connections.
This is a feature that could probably work well in Kansas or even Florida. But, at The Post? These are readers that need a reason to be connected. They need content they can connect with and a reason to connect. Give it to ‘em! Curley and Crandall could be onto something here, but how about turnning things around even more? How about giving the crowd control over the theme and allowing users to submit content? Crowdsourcing at The Post? Now, there’s a revolution!
All this consternation about TIME magazine’s pick of “You” as the person of the year! As my colleague John McQuaid pointed out, there are still plenty of non-believers out there having problems grasping the concepts and potential behind this new fangled Internet thing.
Well, folks, you better get on board, and quickly. In the spirit of New Year’s predictions, I’m going to go far out on a limb and declare 2007 as the true year of “You.” Better yet, it’s when “You” graduates from toddler status. So, given that it’s the time of year for predictions, I provide you with my own informal Top 10 list of predictions — some serious, some not so much.
1. There will be at least two dozen Web sites devoted to the upcoming presidential election by the end of the year. It’s happening already, but the 2008 election cycle is shaping up to resemble the 2000 run-up, when dozens of Web sites cropped up to cover the campaign and election. The question this time around, will any of those sites have the legs to survive after Election Day?
2. One of those new Web sites — The Politico — will struggle and by year’s end, some of the talent in place now will have left. I’m hedging my bets here a bit because I’m willing to give John Harris and Jim VandeHei, former colleagues at The Washington Post, the benefit of the doubt. Still, I’m not convinced that they understand the concept behind multimedia presentation. It’s more than having your writers talk at the cameras and appear on televised news programs. How long will it take them to get that?
3. Speaking of The Post, after more than a decade of separation, the news operation there will follow the lead of the New York Times and USA Today and converge their print and Web operations by year’s end. The two operations are already headed in that direction. (Full disclosure: I worked at washingtonpost.com for 10 years.)
4. My parents will finally break down and get TiVo.
5. YouTube will continue to make news and drive news cycles. At least one (more) presidential candidate will be forced to drop out of the running because of a faux pas caught on video. Also expect more video from Iraq – with images from the ground adding fuel to the ongoing debate over the war in the U.S.
6. Journalism programs across the country will swamp the job market in search of professionals to teach this new-fangled convergence concept. Some programs are ahead of the curve, some catching up, but most now realize that the industry is changing and educators need to change their approach away from solely teaching the concepts behind the inverted pyramid.
7. My 8-year-old son will have his own blog by year’s end.
8. The left vs. right war within the blogosphere will again heat up (did it ever cool down?) as the presidential campaign cycle kicks into gear. Bloggers will find themselves in a crisis, however, as to whether to be shills for a particular candidate or continue to maintain their independence.
9. Bruce Springsteen will go back on tour.
10. And, finally, NewAssignment.Net will be a resounding success. Ok, I couldn’t pass this one up. But, based on the experiences of other groups and organizations, the philosophy behind meshing the best of professional journalists, the crowd and the blogosphere seems to be unveiling at just the right time.
Well, we’ll see. In the meantime, have a Happy New Year – it’s going to be a wild one.
Michael Hirschorn’s article in the Atlantic is the latest in what appears to be a series on how to save newspapers. His advice: “stop printing.”
“With few exceptions, the media businesses thriving on the Web either are low-cost blog-like efforts or follow a many-to-many model, in which communities create, share, and consume content. Publishing an article on the Web gets you one click; getting your users to write the article for you gets you a thousand clicks, and costs less to boot. In other words, turning your users into contributors increases their engagement with your site—each click is, after all, also an “ad impression”—while simultaneously generating more content that you in turn can sell to advertisers.”
His suggestion sounds eerily familiar to what we at Assignment.Net are attempting— with the caveat that we’re not a commercial site.
Hirschorn’s piece is fascinating and definitely worth reading. He revisits the EPIC 2014 video, which I had forgotten about. The video, which predicts the demise of the traditional journalistic organizations and the rise of social networks, aggregators and citizen journalists shocked many in the business when it was first released in late 2004. I must have had a dozen colleagues e-mail it to me at the time, with the same panicked “have you seen this?” subject line.
What’s amazing, says Hirschorn, is how much of the futuristic video has come true, or is on its way to becoming true.
“As a piece of pop futurism, EPIC 2014 is both brilliant and brilliantly self-subverting (at once inevitable and preposterous). But what’s remarkable is how many of its ten-years-out predictions have already come true—if not materially, then de facto: the mass migration of everything to the Web, the explosion of blogging, the near-instant embrace of social media (see YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia), the growing sophistication of Google’s AdWords and AdSense (the latter soon to be extended to user-customized RSS file format and other feeds), the TiVo-ization of television, and on and on. Instead of buying Amazon, Google bought YouTube, an Evolving Personalized Information Construct that didn’t exist in 2004—GoogleTube instead of Googlezon. Thus does two-year-old futurism already seem hopelessly recherché.”
And in what can only be described as a major earthquake in journalistic circles, political editor John Harris and national political reporter Jim VandeHei announced today that they are leaving The Washington Post to work for a new politics Web site.
In its announcement, Allbritton says that the duo will work together with the group’s new newspaper, The Capitol Leader, to create “an unmatched, web-based, one-stop-shop for political news coverage.” They will try to challenge the traditional media for dominance in covering national politics and Congress.
For two of the nation’s top political journalists to decide to leave The Post and its award-winning Web operation is stunning. This is the time when all the major news operations are gearing up for the ’08 election cycle. Harris and VandeHei apparently think they can do it better elsewhere — on the Web. And they think innovation is more likely to come from outide the established news organizations. As Fishbowl DC put it: “The decision by both VandeHei and Harris is premised on the belief that the ‘old media’ way of doing things simply doesn’t work for political coverage.”
Used to be that when you got to The Washington Post you had gone as far as you could go. Now there’s another place: Self-invention on the Web.
Steve Fox worked as an editor at washingtonpost.com for 10 years.
That’s no longer a negative thing.
At a panel discussion on “Trends in Political Blogging,” sponsored by the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet Wednesday, there was the usual debate over who is a blogger, who is reading blogs and whether or not blogs are providing a real revolution in communication.
Not much new there.
But one word that was mentioned several times—and we at NewAssignment.Net applaud this—was “transparency.” While professional campaigners may not necessarily welcome the onset of more transparency, this cycle will likely require them to be more open with the peeking public. “Blogs have forced the media and politicians to be transparent; you can’t get away with much anymore… you get called on it immediately,” said CNN’s Jacki Schechner.
There also seemed to be agreement that blogs will not be the only Web tool in use during the upcoming election cycle. User-generated content, video and podcasting were also mentioned.
“We have no idea what is going to happen,” said Patrick Ruffini, the ECampaign(s) director for the Republican National Committee (no representative from the DNC was present.)
“Campaign professionals are going to have to learn how to turn on a dime and be able to change when the tools change.”
One of those tools will likely be the “power of the people,” or what Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation described as “citizen oversight.” (Sunlight is a funder of NewAssignment.Net.)
Sunlight began its Congresspedia project, said Allison, as a way to “harness the potential of the internet to change relationship between constituents and members of congress.” By providing citizens with the tools to do their own investigations of members of Congress, Allison said he realized people really do care about transparency.
What has been interesting to watch, says Allison, is that you start with a drop in the ocean, and then watch as the “ripple effect” turns that little drop into a wave of action.
“The expertise of you audience drives the story and attracts a much richer amount of information,” said Allison. “You can actually see the story develop. In Internet time, new information comes out within hours after you have posted something.”
Allison was laying out the framework for distributed, networked, open source journalism but the concepts didn’t seem to resonate with the political professionals and academics in the room.
Much of the discussion had a circa 2000 feel to it, with one student next to me shaking his head at the end, wondering how so many professionals seemed to be missing the point by focusing on narrow questions like “who is reading blogs?”
Robert Moran, the director of research for Strategy One who said he was involved in Republican campaigns in the past, said that blogs and talk radio could be paired together by candidates in an effort to bypass traditional methods of getting information out.
Will blogs become another political tool by Republicans and Democrats? Those on the panel kind of danced around the issue but CNN’s Jacki Schechner did say the ’08 cycle could see more and more bloggers latching onto candidates and pushing them.
As in all election cycle, candidates and campaigns will look to get their message out anyway they can. Bloggers will likely play a larger role this time, working with campaigns. But a new twist will be the role of voters and constituents, who will have the tools and the motivations to watch and keep everyone honest. It’s going to be fun to watch.
Steve Fox is a contributing editor with NewAssignment.Net. In a previous life, he worked on the politics team at washingtonpost.com and was the politics editor from 2001-2003.
“A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals — Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN — with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from “mainstream” media and blogosphere musings on yesterday’s news. Digital fish wrap.”
Hmm, ok. So, let me get this straight. A First Amendment attorney AND a “journalist” is proposing to withhold information from a part of the population? And Scheer has even thought about how to keep the pesky lawmen away:
Peter Scheer, billed as a lawyer, journalist and executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, columnizes in the San Francisco
Chronicle that newspapers and wire services, to help protect their collective bottom lines, should embargo their news content from the “free Internet” for about 24 hours.
Here’s more:
“A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals — Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN — with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from “mainstream” media and blogosphere musings on yesterday’s news. Digital fish wrap.”
Hmm, ok. So, let me get this straight. A First Amendment attorney AND a “journalist” is proposing to withhold information from a part of the population? And Scheer has even thought about how to keep the pesky lawmen away:
“To keep the U.S. Justice Department at bay, it needs to be clear that the newspapers are not acting as a cartel, but as a standard-setting body agreeing on a common standard for the timing of release of copyrighted content to the free Internet.”
Wow, I mean, wow. Jeff Jarvis describes this as a “numbnutty idea.”
I sit here flabbergasted. How, exactly, is this proposal in any way supportive of the First Amendment?
Scheer, in trying to come up with a proposal to save newspaper advertising dollars, misses the point completely. Advertisers are flocking to the Web and newspapers that are going multi-platform and accepting the fact that the newspaper Web site is the predominant moneymaker are ahead of the game.
The assumption that embargoing information (good luck doing that, by the way) will somehow inflate the value of newspapers is achingly flawed but no doubt is a concept supported in many corporate board rooms.
An editor at The Washington Post once asked me how the Web site could drive readers to pick up and read the Sunday newspaper. I politely responded that that’s the wrong direction.
Scheer’s 1996-like proposal is just that, headed in the wrong direction. And, the idea that a First Amendment attorney would propose restrictions on the release of information? Wow.
Earlier in the summer, the News-Press asked for citizens help in investigating ongoing concerns over price hikes in their utility assessments, due to extensions of the systems. The community responded in full force – and through the newspaper (not because of it) did the journalism that got their concerns addressed.
The News-Press operation has gained some notoriety since Gannett’s big reorganization announcement last week. Gannett’s decision to rename the newsrooms at its 90 newspapers as “information centers” is part of a larger philosophical move to focus on cross-platform distribution and citizen journalism. For the most part, those inside and outside the industry applauded the move and a recent investigation by the News-Press newspaper and Web operation, owned by Gannett, has been cited as an early success story in the effort. (For another perspective, check out this and for good roundup coverage, check out Jeff Howe’s summary.)
But, what about these citizen journalists? What motivates citizens to take part in such an enterprise?
As one citizen journalist put it, “it helps to have a dog in the race.”
In this case, it was an overwhelming reaction to a perceived injustice. Upset and unwilling to take it anymore, many within the Cape Coral community took the opportunity to help the Fort Myers reporters when the newspaper and Web operation posted a “Help Us Investigate” query in relation to the city’s decision to raise sewer and water rates because of an expansion of lines.
Kate Marymont, the executive editor of the News-Press’s integrated newspaper and Web operations said the query “tapped into a nerve” within the Cape Coral community.
That would be putting it mildly.
Sal Grosso has been pushing for reforms within the Cape Coral utilities system since the early 1990s. Dissatisfied with City Hall, he has traveled to the state capital in Tallahassee and even ran for a City Council seat to help bring about what he saw were misplaced priorities, bad spending decisions and worse.
When the News-Press asked for help in their investigation, Grosso had been waiting.
“I’ve probably sent more than 30 e-mails over the past year to the people at the News-Press,” Grosso said. “It’s had all manners of documentation – which showed that there were properties within the assessment area with big discounts.”
Marymont describes Cape Coral as a “community that likes to talk.” That, combined with the financial hit that many would take with assessment increases, led to a community mobilization that surprised most at the News-Press.
“We have more than ten thousand people on our forums. But, the response here (with the story) was different. People were searching for documents and asking questions.”
The commitment to the story was there for many homeowners. J.C. Rodriquez, one of the founders of the Cape Coral Watchdogs, says he has been fighting City Hall on this issue for three years. He has uncovered dozens of internal city memos, which he says he has forwarded to the FBI. While the city cut assessment fees by 30 percent as a result of the investigation, the story continues – both online and in the community.
“This began by going to City Hall and complaining, then we started sharing ideas with those at the newspaper,” said Rodriquez. “We did a lot of research, fact-finding missions. We tried to uncover as much information as we could.”
Much of the debate over the assessments, and much of the resulting stories, unfolded on the News-Press unmoderated discussion boards. One city homeowner, Lloyd Duhon, began his involvement with the story on the discussion boards. But, some of the discussions turned nasty, so he decided to start his own blog, the Cape Informer, where he reported his own findings.
The News-Press was ahead of the game going into the investigation because it began integrating its Web and newspaper operations about three years ago. She describes her reporters as MoJos (mobile journalists) – who will go out and shoot the “first day of school photos” and then come back and do and construct a gallery for the Web site. A photo or two may run in the newspaper and the story written will run across platforms, including their Spanish-language weekly.
Also, this is not the first time the News-Press has reached out to its community to generate content. During the hurricanes of 2004, Marymont and the News-Press editors asked community members to help them keep FEMA honest by submitting photos and stories.
It’s all part of a new era of journalism, says Marymont. She avoids the jargon of crowdsourcing and citizen journalism and just gets excited about the new watchdog role being adopted by members of the community.
“It’s been fascinating to watch this expansion of watchdog journalism,” she says. “In a way, we’re deputizing watchdog journalists – it’s very exciting.”
So, what are the lessons learned? Marymont passed along some keys for how news organizations can help make crowdsourcing work:
* Be ready to respond. The News-Express vastly underestimated the response they would receive to their query and many emails and phone calls went unanswered in the first few days. The editors scrambled and recovered but Marymont says you’ll send the wrong message if you’re not ready to respond and interact with citizens. “People wanted to be acknowledged and to see their input acted upon.”
* Be ready to give up control. Perhaps the single biggest issue with reporters and editors – editorial control. Marymont said staffers came along at different paces but that in the end the success of the story was what convinced many that the process worked. “Every time we turned around, a new document was being posted or a new discussion thread was taking place out there.”
* Online stories evolve differently. Perhaps Marymont’s biggest frustration came when the Web site would have information or a story that was late getting into the newspaper. “The story built itself. The public shaped it and we had to get used to that. We had to learn that online development of a story and the development of a print story take different paths.
Finally, what may have helped the News-Press succeed more than anything else is that they adopted the personae of a true community newspaper. The editors set up a Town Hall meeting with city officials which many residents came to, well-armed to quiz city officials.
As Marymont says, community members got a taste of investigative journalism and they were hooked.
Say goodbye to the daily tunnel vision. Gannett’s newspapers will now have reporters and editors focused on delivering local news across multiple platforms. And they’ll be finding ways to use the locals to get out the news. (See CEO Craig Dubow’s memo about the changes.)
Gannett is the company that brought a journalistic revolution in 1982 with USA Today — a newspaper that was dominated by short stories, big pictures, info-graphics and lots and lots of color. At the time, professionals at many of the major institutions dismissed Gannett’s efforts. Just part of the dumbing down of America, they said. Today we realize there was a lot of innovation there.
Newspapers, including Gannett’s, have traditionally operated in silos: national reporters and editors covered national news, photographers took care of the images, etc. Gannett takes all these traditions and throws them out the window. The focus will be on delivering information, not job titles and section loyalties.
And there’s more. “Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions,” wrote Jeff Howe of Wired on Friday. (See Gannett to Crowdsource News, Nov. 3). According to Howe, Friday was the day Gannett’s 90 newspapers would re-christen their newsrooms, and call them “information centers.” Gannett has a four-part strategy:
Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.
It certainly sounds like a major re-organization. And it come after the groundbreaking decision at USA Today – Gannett’s flagship newspaper – to merge its news and Web operations. In fact, it is the second stage of that announcement.
At his blog, Howe explains how the company’s newspapers will restructure into seven primary focus areas – Digital, Public Service, Community Conversation, Local, Custom Content, Data and Multimedia.
Huh? What happened to National, Foreign, Metro?
“We’ve broken into task forces to figure out how to implement this, but some of this stuff, I’ll be honest, gives us great pause,” said one midlevel editor at a Gannett newspaper, speaking to Howe on condition of anonymity.
As an editor for washingtonpost.com the last 10 years, I saw plenty of committees started when new initiatives were proposed. After much brainstorming and meetings, the initiatives that at one point generated much excitement would die. The meetings were not a prelude to action, but a substitute for it. Gannett needs to abandon this desire to set up “task forces” and just go ahead and “do.”
Actually, Gannett is already doing. The company seems to have made successful use of crowdsourcing, as Howe calls it. (See his Wired article, The Rise of Crowdsourcing.) Earlier this year, one of Gannett’s properties – The News Press in Ft. Myers, Fla., — asked local residents for help in investigating abuses in what the sewer district in Cape Coral was charging people. They got an “overwhelming” response. It led to a reduction in sewer assessments: a victory not only for reporters and editors but the community at large.
What’s exciting about the experiment in Ft. Myers is that all of the “official” parts of the puzzle – professional journalists and government officials in Cape Coral — took the journalism seriously. The journalists were able to tap into much of the expertise out in the community while city officials got a pretty good sense of the outrage within the community.
Instead of just including quotes from engineers in a traditional stories, some engineers took it upon themselves to actually go out and study blueprints and then not only offered their comments to reporters, but to the community at large through online discussion boards. One expert got another expert going, with accountants and others getting involved in the actual reporting.
And, what really gets me jazzed is that this innovation is focused on – take a deep breath – the journalism. The crowdsourcing that The News Press in Ft. Myers did made for better journalism. Which makes for trust. If your local newspaper asked for your help and the help of your neighbors and took that help to reveal illegal overcharging of you and your neighbors, there’s a gain in reputation there that’s critical to the success of the business.
Over at Buzzmachine, Jeff Jarvis writes about how important success stories will be to the continued future of “crowdsourcing.” I’ve told Jay Rosen the same thing about our efforts here at NewAssignment.Net – a successful story will lead to more.
Simply put, the news from Gannett is good news for us at NewAssignment.Net. Not that the mainstream media is giving credence to the concept, but that there is a citizenry willing to get involved when the offer is genuine and the journalism real.
In reading some of the coverage, I can see the paranoias that might develop. As a professional journalist for 20 years, I know that many of my friends at Gannett and elsewhere are automatically going to think “cost savings and job cuts” with this move by the company. And, I guess that’s a natural reaction.
But, there is something larger and more exciting at work here. At USA Today’s facility in Tyson’s Corner, Va., editors have quietly and successfully merged their news and Web operations. Yes, the arrangement is not perfect, but those I have spoken with say that members of the two operations are able to sit side-by-side and get the job done. Now, the advent of the “information center” will redefine everyone’s job at Gannett – reporters and editors will now be thinking in terms that truly define this age as one of multimedia.
In the summer of 1996, many of the major national news operations suddenly got religion and realized they had to get their newspapers onto the Web – quickly. It was a mad rush. Who was “first” remains somewhat up for debate. That summer marked a fundamental course alteration for members of the mainstream media. Is the Gannett conversion an indication that we are on the verge of another major shift?
We don’t know yet. But Friday was certainly an interesting day for pro-am possibilities in mainstream newsrooms. Tuesday will be another interesting day for citizen journalism. NewAssignment.Net is partnering with Design Observer and AIGA, the professional association for design, on their Polling Place Photo Project
The goal of the project is stated simply on its main page: “By documenting their local voting experience on November 7, voters can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.”
I tried to take the temperature of such an effort with some of my professional friends. One long-time colleague and university professor questioned what conclusions will be drawn from such an effort. The answer lies in large part with the participants. That’s the part of the equation that often bends the mind of the professionals.
Steve Fox is a contributing editor for NewAssignment.Net
I had to check my paranoia though since he had only been gone for minutes, but in a defensive move I’m not exactly proud of, I got up and moved to the other side of the waiting area. I actually headed toward a concrete wall, thinking I might be protected from any explosion.
As I walked away, the traveler came back from the bathroom, and gave me a puzzled look — as if I had broken the silent pact between travelers. Mentally, I shrugged. Another 9/11 casualty.
Every now and then, I’m asked: “Did 9/11 change you?” I rarely answer it head on — part of a conscious decision to not openly talk about 9/11 with many people. For me, many things changed and one of them was this silent pact. No longer do I trust in the simple gestures of strangers. Now, when traveling I almost inevitably ask at some point: “am I in danger here?” Some will dismiss such a perspective and claim I’m a victim of the fear tactics of an administration bent on capitalizing on 9/11. But I don’t think so.
Granted, it’s not a mindset I enjoy. I don’t like thinking of people as suspects. And, it gets worse when I travel with my kids. Then, escape routes enter into my head. If another attack happened in Washington, my wife and I agree that whomever is closer will pick up the kids and drive north to a friend’s place in upstate New York. Even reading that last sentence, I think “when, not if.”
On that day, I was on my way to work at washingtonpost.com’s offices in Arlington, Va., located just outside of Washington, D.C. My wife and I had decided to drive in together, and we were stuck in traffic on Canal Road, one of the feeder routes from Maryland into the D.C. area. We were enjoying the time together on the bright blue day, and listening to the all-news radio station.
When the first plane hit, initial reports said a commuter plane had crashed into one of the towers. For me, it was one of those weird journalistic moments where such a report didn’t feel right and I called one of my producers at washingtonpost.com to see what he knew. For someone who grew up in New York, it didn’t make sense that a commuter place would do that. When the second plane hit, I was minutes away from the office and called my colleague again. He said he had just watched it on television. I will never forget the muted, stunned tone in his voice.
Those touring the 12th floor offices of The Post’s web site are almost always treated to a trip to the balcony, which offers a majestic view of downtown Washington and beyond. On 9/11, we stood there and saw the smoke streaming from the Pentagon. I frantically called my wife and told her to leave and go pick up our kids. At the time, she was a contract attorney working in Rosslyn, just over the bridge from Washington. She worked in a building that housed Defense Department employees and I just wanted her out of there. It didn’t matter. She sat on one of the routes out of Washington for hours as helicopter gunships skimmed over her car, with gunmen peering out the open hatches.
As a journalist, I went into lockdown, taking my emotions and putting them into a corner of my body that I would leave for later. I was the editor of the national and political desks at washingtonpost.com and the columnist that I supervised became the lead writer for the Web site — for that day and all the post-9/11 and anthrax coverage. The next year remains a blur. Luckily, my wife is a former journalist and she understood.
I had two young children at the time, one barely old enough to grasp what was happening. Should I have spent more time with my wife and kids? To this day, I regret not doing that. But, I couldn’t cover the story all day and then come home and actually talk about what happened with them. I’ve talked to very few people about that day and the ensuing year.
So, here I am on the train heading back to Washington, leery of fellow travelers, writing about 9/11 for the first time. And, wondering, can we ever find our way back? Can strangers regain that trust in one another? We now live in a polarized society. Many on both ends of the political spectrum are not interested in genuine debate, which requires an open mind willing to accept opposing points of view.
Major media institutions face their own crises of trust. The notion that citizens can inform themselves from middle-of-the-road, “mainstream” sources is routinely scoffed at. The dominant point of view is that everyone, in every facet of life, comes at an issue from the political right or left.
We need to stop thinking like this. We all need to stop thinking like this.
I think NewAssignment.Net is a huge step in the right direction. And the not-so-secret ingredient in the crust of the pie we are baking is that layer of trust. During my 20 years as a professional reporter and editor, I’ve found that the trust between reporter and editor is built over time, by working in close contact with one another. Jay Rosen’s idea to bring disparate groups together — citizen journalists, bloggers, professional journalists and Net users — is a huge leap of faith because it assumes that trust can emerge among them.
That’s quite a contrast with the bickering and mutual suspicion we’ve seen since bloggers came on the radar screen of the press around 2002. Yet, in bringing these three groups together in a non-profit environment, I and others believe that we can take the best parts of each and do high quality journalism. But it has to be journalism without preconceived notions — political or otherwise.
In this era, “objectivity” is a concept that draws much scorn. I avoid it. For me, fairness and accuracy are better guides to good practice. I believe in letting the story take you where it’s going to take you. I think telling the truth means following it wherever it leads.
I recently left washingtonpost.com after working as an editor there in various capacities over the last 10 years. In 1996, I thought I was on the edge of a revolution and over the next 10 years I tried to push the envelope of Web journalism. Over the past several years, as I’ve become more involved in academic and journalistic organizations, I’ve come to believe that the industry is on the midst of another revolution. At the Media Giraffe Conference at the University of Massachusetts this summer, I heard Jay Rosen and others speak to the desire to do unique, investigative journalism without the pressures inherent within major media organizations. At that point I realized it was time to spread my wings and try something new.
That is where I’m coming from. To be successful, we need to start off by trusting one another, and then build sites where that start can be improved upon. For me, it’s clean slate time. Tabula Rasa, baby. I believe there’s a connection between starting something new and trusting in strangers again. If you want to know where I am coming from, it’s in there.
Steve Fox is a contributing editor of NewAssignment.Net.