Neil McIntosh, an editor at the UK’s Guardian, writes: Let’s forget about citizen journalism.
McIntosh cites approvingly this comment on another blog: “Weblogs and flickr can complement traditional journalism, but they can’t supplant it.”
Well, that’s absolutely true. And it’s what Dan Gillmor and other proponents of the idea have been saying for years and years. Which doesn’t in the least undercut the argument that citizens have begun picking up today’s gadgets to serve as eyewitnesses to the news and thus to perform real journalism.
Let’s not set up a straw man — citizen journalists overthrowing the professionals — only to knock him down, although I must admit that the fretting of the old guard about the emerging new order is entertaining to watch.
After tossing darts at Ohmynews and making the mistake of calling the emerging wave of personal publishing “me media” (it’s about we, not me), McIntosh starts making sense. He talks about citizen storytelling as a valuable communication form, one that all of us can participate in.
Thanks. Agreed. But we’ll dabble in journalism, too, if you don’t mind.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
You’re absolutely right about it being “we” not “me,” but I kinda like the idea of putting the me back in media.
I’ll agree on ‘we’ not ‘me’ unless it has to do with certain aspects of entertainment. I feel comfortable that I make ‘me’ media and Dan and you make ‘we’ media.
There are plenty of different paradigms shifting, not only with journalism, but also entertainment. Some of my Hollywood colleagues sorta don’t believe I’m a one-man operation. I think they don’t like it much. ;-)
Yes; keep the best of the old and integrate it with the new participants and technology…
Hello – thanks for your comments on my post. I’m not sure if you’re bracketing me with the fretting “old guard” – if so, that’s very entertaining.
The obvious answer to your last comment is: well, dabble in journalism, then. You’re a journalist, after all. But relatively few people are, or want to be.
I bracketed picture phones in alongside blogs as “me media”, as it seems obvious to me that people use both without necessarily thinking of what they’re doing as publishing. Indeed, many bloggers feel distinctly uncomfortable with the notion of their thoughts reaching a big audience, and there’s no reason to suggest that new forms of citizen content will be any different over time. For most people, it’s echoingly, resoundingly, about me, not we. Who on earth is “we” for them?
That’s one of the flaws with the citizen journalism movement. It’s an effort driven along, in the main, either by former/current MSM journalists who want to see change in their industry, or by other extraverts who want to have their voices heard.
Neither group is typical of the wider population, and without taking into account the fundamental differences in personality types between today’s participants and the mainstream, their vision of citizen journalism is bound to fall flat on its face (although the genie is out the bottle – maybe enlightened MSM will be the ones left to nurture it? ;-)).
Happily, some experiments are beginning to realise that the number of people who want to perform journalism in the current, old-fashioned sense is very small. But the very robust dogma already surrounding citizen journalism will prevent the more widespread acknowledgment of a limitation that seems as plain as the nose on my face.