UGC 1 Politicians 0: The unstoppable rise of the citizen's voice
Everyone a reporter now. The rise of user-generated content on the internet and mobiles is forcing politicians to the proverbial wall, making them do more stupid things, as in the case of African countries of Namibia and Botswana where politicians are hitting back at citizen reporters with
Medieval/Soviet tactics.
Rattled by the loss of control over information (actually, the flow of it), politicians have reduced to leveling charges of racism in case of an editor in Namibia, and in Botswana they have passed laws making it mandatory for journalists and bloggers to register themselves with the government.
In this mighty age of user-generated content, will they require the whole country to register themselves?
Labels: citizen journalism, legal, mobile, User generated Content
Khabar Lahariya: How a local print newspaper still makes a difference
The Columbia Journalism Review has this beautiful, inspiring story about a local print, biweekly newspaper called '
Khabar Lahariya' ('
The Wave of News' in English) in the local bundeli language, staffed by 20 local women, who are either high school or college grads and freshers.
Started some seven years ago, Khabar Lehariya has a circulation of 35,000 and sells for two rupees (four cents, roughly the cost of a cup of tea in Bundelkhand, a hot and dry region in central India, famous for its bandits, harsh landscapes (think of Robert Rodriguez's Mexico movies), the place where Lord Rama lived and most importantly, for rains that almost always disappoint.
Focus of coverage: To cover all "local issues", all that the main press ignores -
untouchability, dominance of upper castes, banditry, women's rights education, governance (rather, the lack of it)...it is an endless list of problems in India's heartlands, mercifully untouched by the malls.
A paper like this might do great with help of cheap technology like mobiles, for example, for filing voice and SMS-based reports.
How much will take for similar local village journalism initiatives to bloom in 600-odd districts throughout India?At 20 reporters per district, Rs. 5000 ($100) per month, that comes to $24,000/year per district and $14,4000,00/year ($14.4 million) for whole of India. That is what I have in mind. At the current budget for the completely unnecessary Commonwealth Games, we could have funded this
'non-profit local news across India' initiative for 50 years, at least, give or take another 50 years.
Labels: bighow, citizen journalism, local news
What is good journalism?
I did not go to any journalism school. I have never worked for a newspaper or a magazine. As the founding Managing Editor of a Blog Network, a blogger and as the founder of a
platform for Local Journalism, this is what I have learned so far:
Labels: bighow, citizen journalism, guide, journalism, online journalism
Chetan Kunte, Blogging Hero
No one creates heroes better and faster than old media. Sometimes, they do it inadvertently. Like in the case of blogger Chetan Kunte (Chyetanya Kunte), who 'dared' to
question the work of a mainstream media journalist Barkha Dutt of NDTV news channel.
Chetan Kunte was not alone in criticizing the media coverage during the Mumbai Terror Attacks NDTV - the Navy Chief, the NSG, the local panwallah, even those good-for-nothings who live and die by the reporting ethos of India TV, there were few among us who liked the coverage.
But, in the end, it was Chetan who got
the Golden Notice, the letter that makes careers, the letter from the lawyers.
This incident once again illustrates Indian Media types have thin hides and a sense of self importance almost as big as that of the assorted religious gurus.
NDTV is a fine news channel but not in the league of the New York Times, which is covered in unflattering terms on blogs such as Gawker.com on weekly if not daily basis.
I haven't heard about the Times suing any blogger so far.
Commenting about the coverage, Miss Dutt said in the Indian Express, "
If they hated us so much, why are they watching us?"Because, we have no choice, boss. If we don't watch NDTV, we have to do with a hyperventilating, loud Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN or a hyper-opinionated, '
are you talking to me?' Arnab Goswami on Times Now. The only news channel worth watching is NDTV India, in hindi, especially when Ravish Kumar or Vinod Dua are at the helm. Let the news take over, dear.
Chetan was forced to take down his 'offending post' but you can access the
Google Cache version here.
Incidentally, it is more than 3 years, after the
IIPM scandal, since a major
lonely blogger vs. big business story has broken out in the Indian Blogosphere scene.
Note to Miss Dutt:
the Online publishing world is bigger than anything you have ever seen so far. Enjoy your days of media hegemony while it lasts.
Why so serious?Coverage of the issue continues on these fine blogs:Kunte's
withdrawal post.
Patrix's
Post.
Sandeep's
Post.
Gaurav Sabnis (the man who wrote about the IIPM scandal)
PostRelated on MediavideaThe Greatest Moments in Indian Blogging HistoryLabels: blogging, citizen journalism, controversey, india
Hyperlocal: where is the citizen media in small-town America?
Compared to people in the big cities, citizen media activity is mostly limited to pictures on Flickr. Steven Clift at the
PBS Idealab finds that few small town people care to participate in forums, write blog posts, shoot and post videos and do all the things that apartment-living, "pressed for outdoors" us big city folks do.
Small Town America does not Twitter that much. Steven writes:
I've stumbled across a number of sites like Flickrvision and its cousin Twittervision which show real-time geo-tagged content. Panoramio shows photos from Google Earth. Placeopedia and WikiMapia are trying to get people to manually link place-based Wikipedia pages to maps. My friends with Placeblogger allow you to search by place, but I don't want to type in village after village. The best site I've found that seems to get, is FindNearBy.Net which maps Craiglist and EBay sale items.
All in all, touristic rural areas do pretty well with photos online, but finding blogs/blog posts, video, wiki pages, online forums without highly focused geographic term searches seems near impossible. ...
How can we explain this?
1. Hyperlocal is an acquired taste. The failure of Backfence is case in point.
Everyblock is working so far because it works more on the automatic aggregation lines, relying on government data for things like police records. Besides, it focuses on big cities including New York only.
2. Hyperlocal needs proactive hand-holding - where editors and link curators encourage and help out local contributors, doing events and so on.
Thanks for the
linkLabels: citizen journalism, citizen media, everyblock, hyperlocal, twitter
Memo to Mark Cuban: Bloggers aren’t going anywhere
Dear Mark, you write in your blog (hope you note the irony) that since “
anyone can be a blogger in 10 seconds”, you were forced to make a judgment call and you banned bloggers from accessing your Dallas Mavericks team.
What was it that you didn’t like about Bloggers?- Did they not hero worship you, like the clueless mainstream people do?
- Was it the trademark bite and spite from bloggers, which you thought wouldn’t gel well with the Mavericks’ fantastic comeback run? - Is it about controlling the message?You write that a blog is a blog is a blog. Yes indeed. A blogger can do things a news reporter cannot. It was a blog that brought the Larry Craig story to light. Bloggers are in jail in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia for daring to speak out. Bloggers are running for political power in Thailand and Ukraine.
I can go on and on…
You say that ‘there is TV, and there is HBO’. Agreed, American Idol is for kids, but what about PBS? Bad analogies do not a argument make. Public broadcasting and Free voice are the touchstones of democracy, always building beachheads against the relentless tides of hidden agendas and stakes.
You became rich by making a fool out of Yahoo. Wikipedia notes that the sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo for, what was it, $5.7 million, was a ‘
silicon valley joke’ -
As of 2007, neither broadcast.com nor broadcast.yahoo.com are distinct web addresses.Point is, you made it big, playing all the 'right' cards in the Digital Industry. Hell, in some circles, they even consider you as free-wheeling ‘maverick’,
a poster boy for ‘get rich quick’ dreams – please do not kick your fellow bloggers into a
digital ghetto.
Your blogger ban is plain silly. Some day, the Mavericks may hit a trough, as is the circle of life, and then it will be a lonely fan who will blog on for your team, galvanizing other fans, not some big media outfit, which prefers to ride with the stars only.
Do what is right.
Peace.
Labels: blogging. ethics, censorship, citizen journalism, controversey, dallas mavericks, mark cuban
The State of Citizen Journalism in India: Three takeways
A summary of this three part series has also been posted on Journalism.co.uk site, where they have been graciously allowed to blog as a guest. The summary article is titled
Online Journalism India: Moblogging is citizen journalism in India.Some notes:
1. Citizen Journalism does not need destination platforms: tools are everywhere and are free.
2. Citizen Journalists in India, and everywhere else, can be instruments of social and systemic change through a proactive usage of web 2.0 tools, complimented with Television and Radio.
3. Mobile and Microblogging is big and easy.
The three articles in the series on "The State of Citizen Journalism in India" are:
1.
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 1 - blogs, photos and videos2.
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 2 - Television and Radio3.
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 3 - Microblogging and Mobile BloggingLabels: blogging, citizen journalism, india, news 2.0, trends
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 3 – Microblogging and Mobile Blogging
This is the last of my 3-part series on Citizen Journalism in India. In
Part 1, I wrote about Blogs and photos and in
Part 2, I wrote about Citizen Journalism on the Television and Radio. In this last part, I am going to write about the
phenomenon of Micro Blogging/Mobile Blogging that is sweeping across India.
As of January 2008, there were 241.6 million cellphones in India and every month 7.8 million new cellphones are bought. In contrast, the total number on internet connections in India
hovers around the 10 million mark.
There is no wonder why Indians have taken to microblogging in a big way.
The fact that you can only send up to 160 characters using SMS has apparently hasn’t deterred users. Services such as
Smsgupshup.com and
Vakow.com allow users to send common SMS messages to all members of their groups.
People are using these SMS-based services as news broadcasting tools. Users continuously update their groups on these SMS sites with the latest news from far off places.
For example, a journalist in North East India is offering breaking news from his small town on Smsgupshup.com. A news site in the eastern State of Orissa is offering breaking news via the same site.
This is similar to the rage for Twitter in the United States. When Twitter came out, I was one of those who complained about the distractive and inane aspects of the service (
here and
here). But after having seen Citizen Journalists using SMS-based services in innovative ways, and news people covering the Primaries in the United States using Twitter, I am glad few listened to me back then.
In this
interesting article, a user of a sms-based microblogging service in India writes about the time when he
flashed a message about a two boys having fallen into a river in a village in Manipur (North East India) and soon, people got the message on their phones and reached the spot and were able to save the boys in time.
Where users see utility, business sees money. Not surprisingly, bigger players have jumped in, offering a wide variety of
mobile blogging services.
Apart from smsgupshup and vakow, other notable players are Chitr (Twitter clone), ActivMobs, and MyToday MOBS. Reliance Mobile, the second largest mobile service provider offers mobile blogging as well.
I read somewhere and I am sure you would have too, that in 2007,
five out of ten best-selling novels in Japan were originally written on cellphones.
Indians are big texters.
Will the average Indian reader opt for Mobile Novels?
Hemingway wrote a 6 word story:
“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn.”
I wonder whether the mobile novel will ever be half as good.
Previous stories in the SeriesThe State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 1 - blogs, photos & videosThe State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 2 - Television & Radio
Labels: blogging, citizen journalism, india, microblogging, mobile, trends, twitter
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 2 – TV and Radio
This is part 2 of my 3-part series on Citizen Journalism in India. In
Part 1, I wrote about Blogs and photos and in the last part, I will write about the phenomenon of Micro Blogging/Mobile Blogging that is sweeping across India.
India is unique in the sense that it has more national TV news channels than any country, including the United States. The bitter competition that has ensued means that the channels go to lengths to stand out, sometimes to sad lengths, it must be said. However, all TV channels encourage Citizen Journalists to send in their stories.
There are economic reasons working behind these 'noble' actions.
Every 24x7 channel needs content to stay in business. After all, how many times can you show clips borrowed from anyone between National Geographic and Video Zonkers?
As a result, TV News Citizen Journalists are having a good run in India. We saw their importance during the Train Bomb Blasts in Mumbai in 2006.
Two news channels which have adopted Citizen Journalism in an especially big way are CNN-IBN and IBN 7, two sister channels from the same parent company, IBN, CNN-IBN is in English and IBN7 is in Hindi.
In 2007, we also saw BBC launch an initiative to
find citizen journalist editors for its bbcurdu.com, which offers news in Urdu language.
Another TV channel,
Amrita TV in South India has launched a 90-episode reality show focused on nurturing Citizen Journalists.
So far, so good.
But, something is amiss.
As a country on its way up, boosted by a young population, with a growth rate of 9%, India needs better governance, the lack of which, many say, results in widespread corruption.
We have laws for everything but somehow, we haven’t figured to put our politicians and government servants accountable.
News Magazines and News Channels ‘indulge’ in the occasional
sting operations, catching important (and obviously stupid) persons in the Act of accepting bribes and kickbacks.
I said ‘indulgent’ because often easy targets are picked up and done in way that later, you can’t justify in the courts (yes, you will be taken to the courts) that it was done for the cause of
public benefit.
One finds it odd that these news TV channels do not encourage Citizen Journalists to undertake Sting Operations, capturing lawmakers and officials ‘in the Act’. Perhaps, a comprehensive program to ‘promote and protect’ Citizen Journalists is needed.
Thus, for aspiring Citizen Journalists, who have noble ideals in mind, Youtube.com is always there.Meanwhile, TV news channels are happy plucking the low-hanging fruit and you are left wondering whether these channels only consider Citizen Journalism as branding cum source of low-cost content.
Citizen Journalism and RadioI feel Radio and Citizen Journalism are made for each other – radio is more immediate and available on tap for free. Imagine yourself stuck in a traffic jam and someone is ranting about some way-off-the-chart political idea on the Car FM radio. Give me an example of a more captive audience.
But, since the Indian Government does not allow private FM Radio stations ( a list of FM Stations in India is
here) to offer news-based programming, I shall have to remain content with the traffic reports from Citizen Journalists. Which is a pity, since in January 2008 alone
31 new private FM stations opened up with business.
We need a meaningful break from all that incessant and inane Radio Jockey chatter.
2002 was a good year for radio in India. First, the government allowed local communities to start Community Radio services. Then, Raghav Mahato, a poor and illiterate man, only 20 years old, conjured up his own Radio station , Radio Raghav from spare parts and some, running it successfully until the government ordered it shut down in 2006 because it had no license to operate.
Radio Raghav was so popular that on Diwali one year, more than 400 radio sets were bought by people in the catchment area of Radio Raghav, which was easily available in a 10-16 kilometers of radius around the Mansoorpur village, near Hajipur in Bihar and a couple of hours of drive from the state capital, Patna.
If you are interested, you can read more about Radio Raghav
here.
The much-heralded Community Radio initiative has not extended much beyond some elite college campuses.
(Note: It does not help that I live in a metropolitan city. But, I can vouch that till December 2007, there was no sign of Community Radio in a 100 kilometer radius of my native place in bihar).
The fact remains that despite the advent of Cable TV, Radio is still the most potent tool of Social Change in India, covering a rich plethora of lauguages, dialects, communities and sub-cultures.
You see, in electricity-starved villages, not every one can afford lead batteries (or, have ample electricity to charge batteries) to power TV sets but poor people do have Radios.
Incidentally, it does not take much moolah to establish a working radio station.
Radiophony, which is lobbying for Community Radio in Rural India, claims that
"villagers can set up a low-powered, do-it-yourself radio station—with a half-watt transmitter, a microphone, antenna and a cassette player—for approximately $25. " Such a Community Radio Station can easily reach about a third of a mile (1.6 km), easily covering a small village of 1000 people.
We sure can do with more Radio Raghavs in India.
Labels: citizen journalism, community radio, india, radio, radio raghav, sting operations, TV
The State of Citizen Journalism in India Part 1 – blogs, photos and videos
Everyone is a reporter now. This is fast turning out to be a cliche and thus, it does not surprise me to find that Citizen Journalism in India is thriving across different platforms and Indians are happy to use any tool they can get their hands on – blogs, blog networks, photo sites, video sites, mobiles...what else you got?
Task oriented by nature, Indians are delightfully
platform-agnostic and have taken to reporting for Television news and Mobile reporting in a big way. In this article, the first of a three-part series on the State of Citizen Journalism in India, I will cover
blog, photos and videos.
Freeing Citizen Journalism from platformsIt is best to see Citizen Journalism free from the constraints imposed by most so-called platforms. Citizen Journalism is not just limited to sites such as Ohmynews.com, Nowpublic.com, Newassignment.net and
‘destination’ sites. Having said that, I am not implying that there is anything wrong with these bold, fine services.
Where does the Indian Citizen Journalist choose to speak out, giving all of us engaging alternatives to the mainstream news here in India, which some have charitably coined as
'95% drivel & 5 % news'.
Citizen Journalism Destination SitesTwo big sites come to mind.
Merinews.com, backed by IT entrepreneurs is very active with citizen journalism, although it is jarring to see Citizen Journalism as just another link on the navigation bar.
Instablogs.com, which has been around since October 2005, has better design and publishes stories from Citizen Reporters from November 2006.
Instablogs is different in the sense that it pays for the stories it accepts to publish. Disclosure: I was the founding Managing Editor at Instablogs till October 2006.
Blogging platformsThe big three Indian portals
Sulekha,
Rediff and
Indiatimes provide blogging tools to their readers and the activity is quite high.
Blogging CollectivesThey are groups of bloggers who post interesting links on a common site. Started by US-based Indian students,
Desipundit.com is a pioneering site in the field.
Blogbharti.com was launched in 2007 and is doing quite well.
Blogging collectives are important and in my opinion can play a greater role if they have a Digg-like news submission and ratings section. Groups have proven to be the reason for success of social news sites such as Digg and Reddit (although, they can be abd thing as well, if they start taking themselves too seriously, blocking out all opposing points of views)
Teaching Villagers to be Citizen JournalistsSweta Singh, who comes from the state of Bihar, one of the poorest places in India (I come from the same state) but now works in New Delhi has started on a noble mission of training citizen journalism to women panchayat (local village council) leaders in Bihar. The ‘MYOWN’ initiative is an experiment and Sweta is funding the initiative herself.
Student BloggersThey are very active on blogger.com and wordpress.com and most are active participants on social networking sites including Orkut.com and I include social networking sites because Indians are very passionate about their heroes and issues and controversies centered around groups supporting this & that person/issue often spill out onto blogs and so on…
Recently News TV channel CNN-IBN launched the
CNN-IBN Forum for Students. Purporting to be a platform for students to speak out, it appears to be a branding exercise as there are just a limited number of student bloggers and one is not sure how to sigh up, which is a pity.
So far, no news channel or newspaper has opened up a platform for Citizen Journalists in India, something along the lines of CNN’s recently launched iReport initiative. It seems like I will have to be content with seeing every big newspaper flashing mobile numbers and email addresses where everyone can send in stories.
Doc Holliday has reportedly said,
“My hypocrisy will only take me so far.”
Using blogging to bring changeThere are some deep systemic problems with India. In the two-way avatar of the internet, citizens have a platform for their voice. They are no more dependent upon mainstream media, many of whom may dither to publish (and annoy) the powers to be.
In a recent report on e-democracy, the Economist newspaper wrote,
“Citizens are not only the state's customers; they are also its owners.”I look forward to the
next level of Citizen Journalism in India:
Using web 2.0 tools to monitor government offices, government officials, voting records/attendance records of elected officials, allocation and usage of funds, who is in cahoots with whom,… it is a big list of things that must be monitored collectively by the public.
I look forward to mobile pictures and videos of Government Servants demanding or accepting bribes. Online video is an expensive proposition, I suggest using Youtube.
Moving on.
Like I said before, Citizen Journalists of India, and elsewhere in the world, do not need big platforms to speak out. The tools to speak out are plenty and are free.
Some places where you can find the Indian Citizen Journalist on a daily basis:India on Nowpublic.comIndia on digg.comIndia on del.icio.usIndia on FlickrIndia blogsIndia on YoutubeIndia on Technorati15,957 blogs about india
Related articleWho are the top Indian Bloggers?Updates:
1. I think I must mention how Indian bloggers took up the IIPM scandal in earnest. More here. [disclosure repeat: I was the Managing Editor at Instablogs at the time.]
2. Governments will try to muzzle the Citizen's voice on the slightest of pretexts. For example, in the aftermath ofkx the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts, the Government of India decided to ban some blogs but the ISPs inadvertently blocked all blogs hosted on Blogspot. I am positive that this is not the last time we have seen a heavyhanded government at work.
Coming next: Part 2 of the State of Citizen Journalism in India, where I take up TV and Radio. In Part 3, I have covered the exciting phenomenon of Mobile and Micro Blogging.
Labels: Blog networks, blogging, citizen journalism, india, news 2.0
What the Newsroom Fat Layer looks like (and what to do about it)
Alan D. Mutter has written about what many seasoned journalists would call the 'touchy' issue of
"How many people have to read a story before it goes in the paper?". His article comes in response to the recent news about the New York Times planning to lay off 100 people from the editorial pool.
It is more than a quality issue. It is a focus issue.
Let's have a look at my brief question list:
1. Do you need more people to cover Britney Spears, the G8 summit, Davos meet, Sports Event?An enlightened mind said this, pardon me for not remembering who:
"The real problem for news is not that there are too many reporters, but that there are too many reporters in the wrong places."2. Do you need more people to cover Gadgetporn, something that pays the bills for many top blogs? Instead, you can easily rewrite using the data from the RSS feeds.
3. Finally, do you need more people to cover issues that readers care about?Editors may say that people care about whether Britney gets custody to her kids but then you can easily get the story from the Wires instead of putting a dedicated reporter.
Jeff Jarvis has posted results about a survey where he asks readers about
newspaper jobs and sections they would cut off. Early results have come in and people have indicated what section/job they would cut:
Financial tables 43.06%
Sports section 21.65%
Sports columnists 8.00%
Entertainment section 3.76%
Movie critic 3.76%
Business section 2.59%
Syndicated features 2.59%
TV critic 2.59%
Music critic 1.88%
Book critic 1.65%
Comics 1.65%
Foreign bureaus 1.65%
Lifestyle section 1.41%
Washington bureau 1.18%
Editorial columnists 0.71%
Copy editors 0.47%
Online site 0.47%
Top editors 0.47%
Editorial page 0.24%
Photographers 0.24%
What this survey tells you is that
there are certain things other people are covering better than you and
you are probably better off using data from Wire services and RSS feeds instead, saving costs in the process.
Locking at the graphic above and the survey results, make your own judgments.
Labels: blogging, citizen journalism, news 2.0, news business, newspapers
The four models for paying journalists
I will try to summarize the three main models of paying journalists for the news they bring to the public:
1. Regular Pay: The safest option. Alas, the print advertising money that paid your salary is shrinking under the onslaught of the internet.
The problem is acute enough so that even journalism teachers are starting to
question this noble profession.
2. Micropayments: Where your readers pay you on each article read basis. Micropayment was once believed to offer reader and the writer a more flexible option than subscriptions. However, so far, no one has found a hassle free method of making micropayments.
3. Public Support: This method is currently in vogue. Web sites such as Newassignment.net have come up, channelizing outside funding to journalists who want to do investigative reporting.
Although, it appears sound (and noble as well) in nature,
the big problem is:
Who gets the money?
Since there can be an indeterminate number of people in any ongoing investigation, proportioning money can be hard. Harder than doing the investigative work itself :-)
4. Advertising: Many journalists (Oma Malik, Rafat Ali) who have left their mainstream media jobs to start their own largely blog-based news sites and blog networks find the ad model appealing.
This is something that they can easily implement - book a domain, set up wordpress, add all the necessary accessories, sign up for Google Adsense, paste the code provided by Google and Voila! You are set.
However, since the ad model is the easiest, it is also the hardest to stand you from the huge crowd.
To succeed using the ad model, you will need to:Find a profitable niche, develop a unique voice and work hours building and nurturing your target audience - commenting on other blogs, participating on forums etc. It is a long slog.
I am sure there are other models to pay journalists. Please share.
{Note: Model No. 1, the Pay Model is thriving here in India, where the print media is projected to make more money as a booming economy and a young, upwardly mobile demographic means that more Indians have access to reading matter than ever before. More on this, later]
Labels: adsense, blogging, citizen journalism, journalism, news, news business, online journalism
Bighow and CNN’s iReport: long lost cousins?
I am not sure whether the guys at CNN had a look at our in-the-works citizen journalism site Bighow.com when they launched
iReport but we are mighty pleased that someone somewhere has the hots for same shade of blue, minus the rounded corners, which we thought was too common a part of the web 2.0 look template.
At least some thing we must be doing right, hmm? For further proof , click
hereLabels: bighow, citizen journalism, news 2.0
To succeed, Citizen Journalism needs bold reporting
One of the reasons cited for the dull fare and subsequent insipid activity on hyperlocal sites including the now defunct Backfence may be attributed to the plain and painful reality of stories on display not being bold enough.
Many bloggers have been bold Citizen Journalists, writing fearlessly, doing exposes, doggedly following causes they believe in.
How come citizen reporters on CitiJ sites are not enterprising enough?
Till late 2006, I was the Managing Editor at a blog network in New Delhi. We had many talented writers who were quite passionate about their subjects but I found that they were not as passionate when they wrote, sounding too automated.
There were ownership issues involved.
Being a PAID blogger provided security but it was no incentive to writing with an
original voice on blogs, something that makes a blog stand out.
Could a similar thing be happening to Citizen contributors at CitiJ/Hyperlocal sites?
Could better editorial guidance help bring out the best in Citizen Reporters?
Or, are we walking in circles here?
Maybe citizen reporters are self starters.
Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas and Burmese investigative reporter May Thingyan Hein won the
2007 Knight International Journalism Award winners. Working in regimes that excel at shutting people's vices, these bloggers have given
' first-hand reports, videos and photographs have attracted thousands of readers and the attention of mainstream news outlets, which have begun to pick up his hard-hitting stories.'Wael Abbas has been arrested, interrogated, and beaten, but all that couldn't bring down his enthusiasm for fearless reporting.
It remains to be seen how we channelize this spirit onto Citizen Journalism sites.
Aggregating all the best reporting might be a good beginning.
Labels: Blog networks, blogging, citizen journalism
7 Perspectives on Andrew Keen's hatred for User Generated Content
What makes Andrew Keen so angry at the 'ameteurish' web 2.0 people? There was this Indian film from the 80s and I paraphrase, in Hindi:
"Andrew Keen ko gussa kyon aata hai?"
The top reasons, in no particular order:
1. Some say Andrew Keen still hasn't gotten over the failure of Audiocafe.com, a casualty of the 2000 web bubble burst.
2. Some say Andrew Keen is unhappy because someone deliberately posted this on his bio entry on Wikipedia, which incidentally is one of his favorite hate objects:
"he was also "a child actor who found fame in a series of soup commercials" (not correct)
3. Some say because his blog is not as famous as others, he has gotten around to saying that
"bloggers don't read enough". Don't tell this to Robert Scoble. I wonder what the people at Google Reader, Feedburner and Bloglines make of this gem.
4. Others point out that maybe Andrew Keen does not consume mainstream/old media fodder and that is why he can't find any fault with it, despite of Fox news, Jason Blair and other old media luminaries.
Or maybe someone paid him well to ignore the
corrupt and compromised part of old media and do a hatchet job on new media instead.
5. Or, maybe Andrew Keen was a librarian or an editor in his previous life.
6. Some say Andrew Keen wanted to become a gatekeeper, ala Old Media, but no one put any grass before him.
7. Finally, Andrew Keen knows the truth but will deny it, for there is no money in truth :
"Amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic"Labels: blooks, citizen journalism, controversey, ethics
What happened to crowdsourcing? Assignment Zero and beyond
In all probabilities, lack of editorial support led to the supposed failure of Assignment Zero, the hyped crowdsourcing experiment undertaken by Wired Magazine and New Assignment.net.
The target was 80+ original feature stories. The output: 7 original essays and 80 Q & As.
Jay Rosen, who started the project, reckons that Assignment Zero could achieve only 28% of its target.
However, critics of crowdsourcing, including die hard old media mothballs, need not celebrate. Wired Magazine reports that the quality was at par with the output of profession al reporters.
If only they had put in more editors to support, counsel, edit and channelize the output of enthusiastic citizen reporters, you bet Assignment Zero might easily have come up with 100 original feature stories in the given time.
At one time Assignment Zero was supported by
one editor only.
Goes without saying that to make a good idea work, you need more than hype and widespread press coverage. You need commitment.
IMHO, what Assignment Zero needed was the type of the editors that work at top end news sites and blogs, who understand online news publishing software (Assignment Zero used Drupal) and are comfortable with the workflow.
The reporters behind the project should have known better: mere words are worth nothing.
The quality of Assignment Zero articles show that Citizen Journalism may not necessarily be ‘not professional enough’.
Crowdsourcing and Citizen Journalism can work together.As they say,
‘all you need are many good online editors’.These are still the early days of
Citizen Journalism 2.0Related Reading:Interview Directory at Assignment Zero
Update:Tish Grier, who is Dep. Director of Participation for Assignment Zero, has written a
good account of Assignment Zero on her blog.
Labels: citizen journalism, crowdsourcing, news 2.0
Citizen Journalism is not dead: 7 things that can make it work
Consider the
failure of Citizen Journalism site Backfence as the end of Citizen 1.0.
It also marks the beginning of Citizen Journalism 2.0.
Ethan Zuckerman famously said
the future of journalism is to point to the best content out there.At any moment, citizen journalists are making their mark across the world and they don’t necessarily have to be part of an outfit. Cases in point:
- Bloggers who post pictures of floods in Mumbai, which in turn are taken up by TV channels.- Blogger who brought the Gonzalez case in public- The IIPM scandal in India.- Those who post Hillary Clinton spoofs on Youtube- People rooting for Presidential hopeful Ron Paul on Digg and Reddit- The bloggers who are making GlobalVoices what it is today- Ohmynews, though not making much money is doing okay.- Bloggers who put self-important elite bloggers in their place, pointing to their mistakes and misdemeanors.Citizen Journalism as a business model, with expensive managerial and reporting staff, may be under a cloud – but it is not about a group of ex-journo types as Pete Cashmore would call it.
If Citizen Journalism is about Local news, then how could have startups such as the failed Backfence thrived?
Here is a starter checklist of things to do with Citizen Journalism 2.0:1. Keep costs low: The Arrington, if it is to be called, is the best. It shouldn’t take more than 2 people to run the service – managing servers, making deals, strategizing…
2. Point to the bestPoint to and aggregate the best information produced by local citizens – columns, blogs, photos, video, audio, campaigns, relevant useful information etc.
Initiatives like Placeblogger.com, ChicagoCrime.org are great examples of this.
There are incentives other than paying writers.
Technorati doesn’t pay the bloggers it ranks and aggregates – it uses their content and in return keeps users in the loop with Top 100 rankings.
3. Forums are a great way to foster local interaction.
4. Organizing local events on a regular basis – sponsors are more eager to support these initiatives.
5. SEO, SEO SEO – Like all the smart online publishers, you must make sure all your pages are SEO-friendly – Clean URLs, pinging services such as Technorati and Google Blogsearch, linking and commenting on other blogs and sites, Digg-worthy linkbait articles…there are many smart things you do to help your content rank high on search engine result pages and get traffic.
An
example of new CitiJ site mentions the importance of SEO amd great stories as the key to success.
6. To get more user participation: Citizen services, regular polls, ratings, intelligent moderation, Q & A sessions, User profile videos – getting users the reason to do something on your site, are some of the ways you can avoid the ghost towns that plagued Backfence.
7. Learning from Rob Curley: Rob Curley made hyperlocal work. Google his name and learn about all he has done with local sites.
Newspapers such as Washington Post may be
using the example provided by Backfence to build better local news sites and I think established news brands are now in better position to create great hyperlocal sites, using the examples provided by all startups.
When bloggers
diss Citizen Journalism, consider that as
overenthusiastic opinionitis, with most of them eager to say something hyper, as
cheap linkbait, if you will.
Journalism is undergoing profound changes – let us not make hoary statements and work towards solutions.
We can still bring the best of journalism – research, fact checking and balance with the best on online tools, fostering Citizen Journalism 2.0 in the end.
I look forward to your suggestions on making Citizen Journalism 2.0 work.
Labels: citizen journalism, news 2.0, news business
Free daily in Sweden pays citizen journalists through pay-per-view model
The
Swedish version of Metro, the free newspaper chain is using the pay-per-view model to pay citizen journalists.
Whenever any individual blog in the daily’s network crosses
5000 pageview per month, Metro credits the blogger’s bank account through MasterCard with US$20 (EUR 16).
Paying citizen bloggers is laudable.
However, I am not sure that pay-per-view is the right model.
I credit Metro for having a low traffic threshold of 5000 pageviews per month, but the pay-per-view model pay ensure that only topics that bring traffic are covered, much like what is happening in the blogosphere, with every blogger running after gadgets and gossip.
Some news sites are practicing pay-per-view and I wrote about it on
MediaVidea explaining how damaging it can be the cause of journalism.
Labels: blogging, citizen journalism, online journalism, pay per view
Douglas Adams bats for Web 2.0, posthumously
You need to turn to the late and great Douglas Adams to find ammo to quiet down the anti-Web 2.0 mob led by the likes of Andrew Keen who believe that this wave of masses using the internet to express themselves is nothing but amateurish bullshit.
Presaging the rise of user-generated content, in 1999, Douglas Adams wrote in
How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet,
Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web.
Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.
For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’
What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.”
At the end of it all, the internet is just something that people use to do what they have always done – talk, fight, talk back, write, indulge in the art…conversing to a bigger audience than the average barnyard.
Lesson for Keen and the argumentative ‘
Expertologists’: There will always be Experts just like there will be the solitary blogger, untrained editor, photographer, amateur Auteur.
Let a million voices bloom.
We will have hits and we will have the long tail.
The best content on any given day will stand out.
The ‘
Expertologists’ know that they have a better response with the mainstream media than online – unlike the reasoned and informed technology reading you get on the blogs on a daily basis, lazy reporters and editors in the papers and New TV stations are only happy to cover an half-assed anti-internet hokum.
Why fear
the Amateur Wave other than,
1. To write a book and make money
2. Appear on TV and panels and stroke your fragile ego.
Douglas Adams excerpt found Via
Bokardo via
Kevin MarksLabels: citizen journalism, controversey, web 2.0
Can Blogging change the world?
The jury is out on that. Sure, Blogging has changed lives of bloggers. Some bloggers have broken out and become authoritative voices – these were mostly the early birds. Others have brought new issues on the table, breaking stories faster than the main stream media – Don Imus, Mel Gibson, IIPM (India), Gonzalez’s Attorney firings, these were blogger success stories.
Some bloggers have become successful online publishers – Calacanis, Denton, Om Malik, Rafat Ali, Arrington, Darren Rouse, John Chow…
Some use blogs to further their name brands – Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin…
What about others? Remember, there are 70 million blogs and about 5 million active bloggers around the world.
Can bloggers bring important issues out in the public?
Seth Finklestein argues that the very breadth and spread of the blogosphere is acting detrimental to more voices breaking out, for two reasons:
1. Too many voices – too much noise and making yourself heard, via the filters of search engines, social media is becoming harder and harder.
2. The gatekeepers: The wild mushroom nature of blogs meant that filters of all sorts started popping up everywhere – Techmeme, Digg, Search Engines, Technorati.
Admittedly, most of the content out there is not worth spreading, but some indeed is.
It is no wonder that many blogs are Gatekeepers themselves and attract special attention from Mainstream media.
Rightly, Seth suggests that if a site like BoingBoing raises an issue, it will get picked up by the New York Times, while smaller bloggers have been writing about it for years.
Many times, this has been the case that an issue pointed by a smaller blog doesn’t get promoted by Dig and other gatekeepers until Techcrunch or others cover it.
Mahatma Gandhi said,
“If you want to change the world, first change yourself.”That means, if you care about an issue, blog about it, sure.
However, do more than just blog – go outside, meet people, evangelize it, talk to others, organize events, take part in events, use other tools apart from blogging, catch the next wave of online innovation early ...
And one day, the world will hear you.
Then, you can set about changing the world.
Labels: blogging, citizen journalism, web 2.0
