Transcript
– Page
3 of 4
 Jan Schaffer
J-Lab Executive Director
Ruhl Lecture,
University of Oregon
School of Journalism and Communication,
May 8, 2008
If mainstream journalists go to a meeting where everyone agrees,
we all know that it’s likely our editors will go on automatic pilot
and say there’s no story there.
What does this say about the ethics of a journalism
that defines “conflict” as
news, but does not validate consensus? Do we even know how to render
consensus as journalism?
Citizen media makers will report a meeting
chronologically and
just tell it like it is. They don’t worry about whether that’s
going to be interesting or whether a story has a narrative arc.
Such
a practice earned the scorn recently of one blogger, who denounced
a Huffington Post entry as so boring “it never should have run.” The
Huffington writer filed 1,400 words, three minutes of audio and
a 480-word transcript.
Her post concerned comments Barack Obama made about
poorer voters
at a meeting of wealthy donors. The writer, an Obama donor, attended
the
meeting.
But she blew the lead, asserted the writer
of the blog called History Eraser
Button. It wasn’t until the 28th sentence that she
reported that, “Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to
explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience.”
When,
in the effort to make our stories interesting, do we fan the flames
of controversy?
“Yes!” said the blogger. “That’s your
lead. Sell it! Get people fired up! Don’t waste your readers’ time.”
I
ask you: When, in the effort to make our stories interesting, do
we fan the flames of controversy? When do we make civil discourse
impossible or drive it underground? When are we so relentlessly
keeping score – which
candidate messed up today? Who bested the other? – that we lose touch
with our readers, who don’t really care about the score. They just
want their leaders to address and solve problems.
So what do we
do with all these new players who don’t seem to want
to play by our rules? How dare they occupy our space?
Last
year, we funded two projects at the University of Montana journalism
school to start up hyperlocal sites in the small
town
of Dutton and on the nearby Crow reservation. When the publisher
of the Big Horn County
News in Hardin, Mont., learned about CrowNews.net he was quoted
in the Missoula Independent as saying this: “Competition. Competition
for news. Competition for attention. Competition for the aspect
of being the primary news source
in the county. The only thing we have to sell is news and readership.
The fewer readers we have the less valuable our paper is to advertisers.”
We
don’t see many partnerships between mainstream and citizen media.
Indeed, we actually see newspapers either denouncing citizen
sites in their backyards as unfair competition or unethical
or ignoring them
entirely and building parallel efforts.
While
it might be all well and good that the journalism school was trying
to train journalists on the ground, he said, “They are
sending them out to undermine and destroy the very newspapers that
will be hiring them.”
Those are fighting words. Is it only those of us who belong
to the official tribe of journalists who have the purity of intent
and the rigor of ethics to serve our communities? Once upon a time, I might
have
agreed with that. But it is no longer so clearcut for me.
What doesn’t
exist yet, but I hope to help build, are real, operating examples of how
things could be different for both Big
Horn County News and CrowNews.net. J-Lab hopes to be able to show
how news organizations could begin constructing an overarching
local “info-structure,” one that would support new
definitions of “news,” new participants in content
creation and interaction, and new pathways for news and information.
While it seems like partnerships (and outright
acquisitions) are happening in many media arenas, we don’t see many
partnerships between mainstream and citizen media. Indeed, we actually
see newspapers
either denouncing citizen sites in their backyards as unfair competition
or unethical or ignoring them entirely and building parallel efforts.
Some
smart news organizations, though, are beginning to take some cues
from these media developments. They are concluding it’s time
for a new core mission, one that repositions the newspaper in the
community and revisits knee-jerk practices.
Denouncing
these alternative channels of information as not "real journalism"
will no longer work.
I
believe that news organizations need to construct the hubs that
will enable ordinary people with passions and expertise
to
commit acts of news and information. Call them random (or not
so random) acts of journalism, if you will. News organizations
need to be on a constant lookout
for the best of these efforts, trawling the blogosphere, hyperlocal
news sites, nonprofits, advocacy groups, journalism schools and
neighborhood listservs. Your goal is to give a megaphone to those
with responsible momentum,
recruit them to be part of your network, impart some core journalism
values – and
even help support them with micro-grants.
Ultimately,
your goal is to rethink who are really the experts about that
community. Is it just the heads of organizations, or
people with titles, or elected officials? Or is it the people who
live there day after
day? What is the ethic that has ignored those voices or relegated
them to the color quotes? A more responsible journalism would mine
that expertise
and amplify it. But first you have to find it and nurture it.
This
new mission is requiring journalists to embrace new partners, validate
supplemental news channels, and support – without always
controlling – a vibrant local newscape. Denouncing these alternative
channels of information as not “real journalism” will no longer
work. (Continue >>)
Jan
Schaffer (jans@j-lab.org) is executive director of J-Lab: The
Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland.
E-mail news@j-lab.org to get a copy of "Citizen Media:
Fad or the Future of News?."
Questions
or comments? E-mail Jan. |
