Oh, great! Now everybody's a freakin' media critic!

National Journal media critic Bill Powers is interviewed in PRWeek on the state of media criticism and what PRWeek sees as the burgeoning number of media critics:

PRWeek: With the Web, now almost anybody can be a media critic. Do you think the quality of media criticism is still there?

Bill Powers: Suddenly, there are about 10 million more media critics than there were 10 years ago. I find that exciting. It's funny, there are all these bloggers and all these people who are instant media critics, and yet there are a lot of traditional news outlets that still don't have anyone doing media criticism... My philosophy is, the more, the merrier.

And I actually think there are a lot of bloggers who are so good at it that I sort of wish they would be picked up by mainstream outlets and do both. Because I just think it's a topic that's really inexhaustible. I do this weekly column and I never have a shortage of ideas. There is always so much happening. And I do find that people really are engaged by this subject and talk about it. I think the conventional wisdom in journalism is that media criticism is an inside-the-business topic and it's really just going to be read by other journalists. And I don't think that's true anymore. I think there is a broader interest. Everybody sort of becomes a media critic, and people follow the stuff. I just did a public appearance last night jointly with Dan Okrent, the former New York Times ombudsman. It was a charity thing for a public library, and they had us in a congregational church in a town up where I live. All these hundreds of people showed up! It was great. They were all interested, and they asked incredibly intelligent questions, it was just fascinating. It wasn't journalists, it was people from the public who really follow this stuff and care about journalism.

I've emailed Bill a couple of times on his column, and he's always responded. great guy who actually knows something about the blogosphere. But one thing Bill is missing is an understanding of why people do media criticism. Think of it this way, Bill: when folks grow up with tv, radio, movies, and all sorts of media, and they're not lulled into brain-deadness from the unbiquity of celebrity worship, they're going to form opinions about media. And, unlike their fathers, who spent countless hours yelling at Walter Cronkite, most folks nowadays are going to channel all that pent up frustration into some darned astute writing and are going to use that writing to talk back to the Powers that Be in media. Most of us who are doing it are smart, perceptive and even might have written on media in the past or created it at some time in our lives (yes, to blow my own horn again: I did an honors thesis that combined media and religion.)

We're a whole new level of media critic and darned proud of it.

Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging

Can MSM Do Citizen Journalism Without Acting Like Big Momma?

Like the domineering mother of a precocious child, the MSM is implementing all sorts of plans to help The People become citizen journalists....

By now, everyone has heard thatCNN jumped on the citizen journalism bandwagon and seeks video, audio, photographic content for their newscasts.

Perhaps, though, there's a difference between citizen-generated content and citizen journalism...but to differentiate would be less of a selling point. After all citizen journalism is a really wonderful buzzword and it'll make CNN look really, really hip to include The People in its efforts.

The World Company, which publishes the Lawrenced Journal-World, along with Kansas University's William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications is launching a citizen journalism academy where they'll even teach blogging! That's kind of funny, considering the blogosphere is a mystery to many at all different levels of MSM. The J-W's efforts appear sincere, but are they looking to cultivate independent thinking in their citizen journalists? or is it more about cultivating a select group of unpaid stringers?

What gets me in all these experiments is that no one is thinking that maybe, just maybe, The People should be watchdogging the MSM on every level--from the local paper to big media outlets. I wonder how much their desire to incorporate citizens is really a desire to stop the watchdogging and get some cheap labor in the process? There's been talk of outsourcing some journalism jobs to India, but when the media can get The People to do its job for nothing by catering to their sense of civic duty, why even outsource?

Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs,

I've got an essay in the Huffington Post

The Trouble With Splog (is bigger than you think)

Update: Doc Searls has had it with splog, too, and has started using the Attributio-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 2.5 Creative Commons license. Doc's right that it's not a perfect solution, but it does stipulate that content cannont be used only to attract advertising. "Because I believe legitimate blogs don't do that. And splogs do." exactly.


One of the biggest problems being a small-time blogger with a modicum of an audience is that you can quickly become a target for sploggers. Sploggers love to skim your content and set up "blogs" that then allow them to make scads of money--it's happened to both my blogs, and I'm not alone. Last year, Steve Rubel, through vanity searches, discovered his blog was being scraped and used for splog--and following Steve's suggestion, I started doing similar searches regularly. Within months of Steve's splog discovery, I discovered that this blog was being scraped. Since then, both have been scraped and the content used regularly by sploggers

A demonstration of the chutzpah of sploggers shows up at the bottom of this post in the "links to." I got sick when I saw this.

I outed one of the sploggers of this blog, Integrity Corporation, a short time ago. They have stopped scraping this blog, but someone else has now started actively scraping my personal blog. I would not be surprised if it was Integrity again, only using a different isp and url.

Steve's been writing regularly on the splog phenomenon, and latest entry on splogs notes an upcoming article in the September Wired that reports some splog stats:

*Some 56 percent of active English-language blogs are spam, according to researchers at the University of Maryland

* A survey by Mitesh Vasa in December 2005 found that Blogger.com was hosting more than 100,000 sploggers

* One splogger interviewed by Wired (I'm not going to dignify him with a mention) made over $70,000 in just three months from his network of splogs

To use a colloquialism: un-fucking-believable. I am horrified that Blogger hasn't done more to stop splogs--even though I'm not shocked that so many exist, and that so many more have found ways to scam the system.

But can splogs be reported, can't we send cease and desist letters? Well, it would be nice if we could find who the sploggers are. Here's my experience: I'm vigilant on searching, but the splogs I've found usually have no contact information. I usually find them well before they put ads on. That's the first clue to a potential splog: a splogger may first load splogs with content and later on put up the ads. It's easy to tell a potential splog from an anonymous blog because not only does it consist of other people's content, but there's no contact information, nor any "about" information! One can never discover who the splogger is, and trying to search for the owner of the domain is also well nigh impossible. Even if those of us who have been splogged and keep an eye on the pre-ad stoked splog, there's nothing one can do to send a cease and desist letter, because there's no contact information.

And if we wait until the ads appear, the solutions for reporting the offender do not seem to be effective. I have reported splogs to Googel AdSense, but the splogs still exist. From reading Steve for a bit, I know he's thought alot, too, about how to get the sploggers on an economic level--unfortunately the Wired article doesn't address that issue. Here's Steve's take on it:

Unfortunately, what's absent from the piece is any accountability directed at the powers that supply these spam blogs with their funds: advertising networks. It seems to me that the splog problem needs to be attacked by not just the publishers and the search engines, but also by the contextual search ad providers who are making it easy for spam bloggers to make money. Google, Yahoo and others will need to raise the requirements for publishers who want to enroll in these lucrative programs. Publishers should have to prove they are legitimate before they can sign up for Adsense or any other contextual ad service. Perhaps a waiting period similar to the one for handguns is a model.

That's it exactly. Even if Blogger puts an entire staff on the task of deleting splog, it won't stop the problem. Blogger isn't the only blogging software sploggers use--the ones who've stolen my content are fond of Wordpress. The ad providers--who on their own, have been upset over click fraud-- should heed Steve's suggestions and start looking more closely at who's applying for their programs and stop rubber-stamping everyone who sends in a request. It wouldn't be too hard to do--all one has to do is click the url and do a quick scan of the blog that's applying to see if the content is original or stolen. It wouldn't take long (I've done it), and I'm sure there'd be a number of enthusiastic individuals who would find the job fascinating and rewarding.

Given how much Google, Yahoo, and the rest are making, is it really too much to ask them to do something that will not just help bloggers, but also help them by tracking down sites that could also be part of the click fraud problem? Seems so logical, doesn't it? But out here, logic is sometimes upside down.

spam
splog
splogosphere

Following Conversations on The Future of Journalism

Over the past week, there have been some amazing conversations on the future of journalism, the contributions of citizens to that landscape, and on blogging as its own unique contribution to journalism....follow the links:

Dave Weinbergerblogging from foocamp on the Future of News session ...lots of great discussion about leveraging social networks, but the big problem with digg-news on demand idea: If we only listen to people we trust, how do we get challenged? (Dave also recently posted a fabulous essay on anonymity and digital identity on the 'net)

Jay Rosen launches the blog for NewAssignment.net after mucho discussion with important comments on the economic model, citizen participation, and personnel ....

The Society of Professional Journalists'has posted great info on their annual convention. Not only did htye have great workshops (really peeved I missed it)all listed on the site, but also there's a fabulous interview with Bob Cox, pres of the MediaBloggers Association from the interview: “There are forces out there who want to mute the bloggers, but we want the right to speak our piece without fear,” Cox said. “Just like the newspaper industry has to contend with the Globe or the Star, the bloggers face the same thing.”

Christine Tatum, the new SPJ President " says the rift between mainstream media and bloggers is unnecessary and she would like to see more training for bloggers" which is fine and dandy....but I wonder what she means by "training"....and with the latest round of "citizen journalist" training programs--notably the Citizen Journalism Academy being offered this semester by the University of Kansas--I'm beginning to wonder if there's just not one too many movements in the direction to control the citizens rather than simply giving them good information....my sense too is that all the "training" will simply strangle people's ability to communicate in this strange space.

and Len Witt defends "citizen journalism" after Jeff Jarvis does his best to try to have it subsumed under the rubric of "networked journalism." I have no problem with the idea of networked journalism. It's an interesting concept that could work well for some kinds of journalistic projects. However the citizens have a right, and with blogging software, the power to do their own journalism for their own reasons--and that the ability to do this is amazingly important to the democratic process. why is it so difficult for some folks to understand this?

Has Madonna Finally Done It? Or Will the Torture Continue for Another (metaphorical) Thousand Years?

Update: The Danes Think Madonna's Concert's Blasphemous, too but not for religious reason. Here's why the Danes are pissed

The Danish media overnight slammed US pop diva Madonna for giving an open-air concert that was nothing more than a "music video", saying it was a "scandal" that many of the 85,000 spectators could not see their idol.

Imagine that! Apparently someone forgot to inform the Danes that when one attends a 700 kroner ($150)a seat conference, they shouldn't *expect* to see much more than "figures as small as matchsticks singing and dancing on a distant stage." Sheesh! If they *really* want to *see* someone like Madonna, they're going to have to spend a heck of a lot more than they did. Do they think she's a philanthropist or something?


Well, the World's bowels are in an uproar over the latest bid for attention from that great media whore, Madonna...

Seems that for her new tour, she's had cross constructed of mirrored panels, which she then hangs herself from and sings cheezy-assed "Live to Tell"...

How Danceteria/Studio 54 of her...

Rob Harvilla in the Village Voice aptly labelled this latest act of a pathetic Middle-Aged Material Girl a "sequence unparalleled in its combination of blasphemy, absurdity, melodrama, humanitarian grandstanding, and preposterous narcissism. . ." (yet Harvilla later backpedals on this one)

or are we just a bit nostalgic for Spinal Tap?

Catholic spokesman Manfred Becker-Huberti (in Germany) pointed out a seriously ugly irony to this stunt: "If someone had tried to portray Mohammed this way, there would
have been a revolt."

Correction: it would have started another war, possibly outside of the Middle East.

But Catholics aren't allowed to say anything about this because, if they do, they're being "poor sports" who can't take a joke. We should *love* the material girl for giving because she's so daring....and aren't all those Catholics just a bunch of pedophile Papists anyway??

Heck, even sweet little religion professor Donna Freitas boldly went on NPR and told everyone she thinks the Pathetic Old Broad's latest media vulgarity is a truly "feminist" statement about Christianity. "she's opening our eyes!" cries Freitas....

ah, the future is now so bright for feminism *and* biblical scholarship that I'm gonna have to wear shades!

Christians, though, are going in the wrong direction to evaluate this latest publicity stunt as "blasphemous." The "B" word only ends up making all those lovely capitalists, who will gladly sell sex as a recreational activity to pre-pubescent kids, laugh at anyone of faith. They revel in making us all look like a bunch of bible-thumping reactionaries.

Blasphemy! How 15th century! Get into the 20th century guys! Blasphemy is good! It's enlightening!

However, from a media as well as progressive christian perspective, here are some very good reasons why faux Jew Madonna deserves to vanish in a ball of celluloid flame:

First, let's look at Freitas' claim that so many laugh when asked to depict a woman on the cross--and that Madonna doing this is good because it challenges those folks assumptions. Wrong way to do with this argument, my fishing feminist friend: mostly because of what Madonna, in particular, represents--capitalism run amock, and a particular psychological condition that makes her ferrit out publicity by Any Means Necessary.

Do any women who own their sexualities and their spiritualities really want this particular woman representing All women? Think about it...

And think about this: perhaps her Act is, after all, that of a desperate woman whose over-priced tour tickets have been selling outside of NYC at a pace that could be called somewhat less-than-hotcakes. Or at least less than the kind of hotcakes Herself prefers...

Now, from the sidelines, I can hear the pop culturati, so hiply a-theistic and smart on all things religion, say "but wasn't Jesus's crucifixtion also a publicity stunt of some kind? wasn't he also committing blasphemy?"

In the eyes of the Sadducees, he was a blasphemer by not keeping the sabbath nor keeping kosher. However, he also perfomed a number of very generous, and noble acts that set him apart from others. He was a tireless defender of women (the story of the widow's mite, his advice to the Samaritan woman), healed people without ever asking for a dime in return (wow, how un-Madonna of him), didn't push children from the table, didn't think the rich were all that blessed....and didn't make any money for preaching in public.

He also died an ignominious death, that was only a footnote in Roman historian Pliny's writings--the Entertainment Weekly of its day. It wasn't front-page news to Rome.

Still I'm sure Madonna, in some delusion of grandure, would like to us to view her charity work and AIDS activisim along the lines of Christ-like acts. And I'm sure her Hollywood Kaballa mentor (a man more concerned with selling a profound mystical tradition to a bunch of poseures than in following Maimonides' advice on the matter) would gladly support her delusion...

Yet consider this: Madonna's generosity has always been amply offset by the bazillions of bucks she's made by selling herself.

If Jesus had sat back and thought about whether or not it would make people love him and give him money if he healed the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, he never would have done it.

And nobody ever paid him for the Sermon on the Mount. There were no tickets to that event. In fact, it was he who ended up having to pull a miracle and feed the people who showed up.

With Madonna, there is never any sacrifice remotly reflective of Christ's acts on her part. Never any true sacrifice of money nor of self.

Many believe Jesus sought to reconcile the world. But whatever he did, he certainly did not reconcile his bank account.

So, let's get some historical and pop cultural perspective here: Madonna's acts of charity are more like those of Madams of Medieval Germany--who funded hospitals and orphan aslyumns with their earnings, while also hoping word of their good Acts would compel the scions of the bourgeoisie to continue to support their particular establishments over a competitors'. Is Madonna, like the Madams, also assuaging her guilt through her charitable acts? Does she believe there will be an Indulgence at the end of the line for her?

It's all business, baby.

One final thought: have we in Western society sunk so low as to accept a middle-aged, overly-horny (please, give the woman some saltpeter!) rapacious capitalist portraying herself as the Redeemer?

Then again, maybe those pasty-faced eschatologists on CNN are right. and if so, will my cell phone work after the Rapture?

Journalism, citizen journalism, media

"Duck and Cover!"--DOPA Passes House, CNN Redefines Irony

Last Thursday (7/26) the Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA) passed the in the House of Representatives by a margin of 410-15.....kind of had an inkling this might happen when I first read about the aptly-acronymed legislation in May.

DOPA was designed to block social software sites from libraries and schools, thus protecting "our kids" from sexual predators. "Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids," said Rep. Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and co-founder of the Congressional Victim's Rights Caucus. "This bill requires schools and libraries to establish (important) protections."

Yet as is noted in CNet's write-up of the vote, the legislation so broadly defines social networking sites as to include everything from Slashdot to Amazon.com to any site that allows us to post profiles (including personal information) as well as facilitate "communication among users" in the form of messages, comments, chats, etc.

Therefore, even political sites, sites defending free speech, freedom of religion, etc.--any site that would allow public profiles in order to engage in civic discourse--would be inaccessible from a school or public library anywhere in the U.S.

The only other country that so broadly blocks access to "offensive" websites is China. Although India, another democracy, recently banned/blocked some websites in the name of "national security."

Oddly, no mainstream media outlet--no paper of record covered the railroading of DOPA through the House.

The only outlets where information on DOPA was available was CNet, a couple of tech blogs and a couple of media blogs (Rex Hammock's great comment "You might as well ban oxygen as a means to rid the world of sexual predators" --I'm sure they would if they could. And find a way to sell it back to us. Free Market, you know...)

This isn't a tech or media issue. This isn't a "keeping our kids safe" issue. This is an access to information issue. This is an issue of our ability to have meaningful public discourse, from a public place, over what has become our digital Town Square. Supposedly DOPA will allow libraries to grant adults access to these sites if they ask permission--which could then easily become another way in which Big Brother can monitor where we are going, what we are saying, and to whom we might be saying it.

From Library Journal.com: "This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students' ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs," said ALA president Leslie Burger. "Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web's most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications. As libraries are already required to block content that is "harmful to minors" under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."

Irony Alert: Yet Free Speech is quite liberally granted to those who want to discuss whether or not the sky is falling...On the same day DOPA is passed, CNN broadcasts a discussion with Jerry Jenkins and Joel Rosenberg on whether or not we're living in apocalyptic times. Quoting Rosenberg: "What's interesting is, I was just at the Iraqi prime minister's speech today. You know, the Bible talks, in Jewish theology and Christian, that Iraq will be reborn as a country and be phenomenally peaceful and prosperous. And then a huge dictator, known as the Antichrist, will arrive. "

Ohyeah...the Antichrist's arrived...he's just not in Iraq.

(BTW, for those of you who are wondering, the Bible doesn't speak of one antichrist, but of many antichrists--see 1Jn 2:18, 1Jn 2:22, 1JN 4:3, 2Jn7. "Satan" is Hebrew for "adversary" which is different from "antichrist." Evangelicals like to fudge it on these two terms, but in biblical scholarship, they're not really *that* fudgeable.)

(thnx to Christine for finding that CNN bit.)

Update
troutfishing picks up the story on DailyKos and elaborates

ePluribus Media covers DOPA

Further Thought: Has anyone bothered to look at whether or not kids have met predators on school or library computers? From media stories on the phenomenon, the problem more than likely starts in the home not at the library or at school.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging,Politics DOPA

If We Put A Naked Girl On Page 2, Will it Boost Our Circulation?

Our local Springfield, MA paper, The Republican, is a typical small-town publication. Its "A" section is full of wire-service news, and wire-service editorials, and wire-service gossip--occasionally a big scandal story about Springfield or a "human interest" story makes it above the fold. The "B" section consists of Local news for Chicopee and Holyoke--whatever's happening on the school board, who got busted for drugs, who got pulled over for going 100 mph on rt. 391, what the town fathers are deciding at the city council meetings, and quick reports on little town festivals (forget about any state coverage--we have to read the Boston Globe for that.) I rarely read The Republican's online counterpart masslive.com because it's unattractive and difficult to navigate, even for movie listings.

So, when I flipped the front page, and glanced the gossip column on Page 2, just to get the latest drunken celebrity stories, I got quite an eyeful:

Yes, that's a naked Kate Moss on the cover of September's Vanity Fair. Due out on Aug. 8. Guess I'm going to have to camp out at the Barnes & Noble for that one.

Guess there weren't enough words in today's drunken escapades of Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson (even with his supposed anti-Semitic remarks) and the editorial staff decided to flesh out the column with this tidbit from AP.

Is it really news that there's another naked celebrity on the cover of some glossy magazine?

But seriously, what does the Republican think it's doing by putting a pic like this on its second page? Are we trying to be hip and European out here? Or was it truly a lack of words on the two big drunken celebrity stories of the day that forced the Republican's editorial staff to fill its column space with the naked Moss?

The Republican is looking less and less relavent to life out here in Western Massachusetts. At least with the Sunday paper we get those nice glossy circulars and an occasional decent investigative piece. During the week, we just get insulted.

Journalism, citizen journalism, media

CNN Gives Permission To The People To Be Citizen Journalists

Poking around the media landscape today, I came across an announcement that CNN plans to boost citizen journalism on its site....

The cable news network on Tuesday plans to announce it has created a new program to let users send in digital audio and video from breaking news events in their region. Users can e-mail or upload these so-called "I-Reports" directly from CNN's site.

Yes, in the typical, paternalistic MSM way, CNN will "let" the citizens send in their "I-Reports." Considering CNN's already gone out of its way to increase jouranlistic stupidity with Glenn Beck, I guess they feel they don't have much left to lose by having a few of the citizenry post their disaster videos to make it look like it's being part of that whole "citizen journalism" thing.

That's not citizen journalism. That's just taking advantage of people's need to be part of the glitz-and-glamour of the MSM Machine.

Revered journalist and NPR correspondent Daniel Schorr gives his perspective on blogging and the Internet:

What is good about it (the Internet) is people will not be able to suppress the news because you can always have a blogger who gets the story out,” Schorr says.

“But what we have here is a medium in which there is no publisher, no editor, no anything. It's just you and a little machine and you can make history. I find that scary. Nobody should get into print or on the air without some kind of editor. I have an institutional belief that nobody can be above having a good editor.”

Wish he would have read the recent report from Pew about bloggers and blogging. Once again, someone from MSM is perpetuating stereotypes and talking in generalities about something he seems to know so little about. First-person accounts of tragic events--if that's what he means by the stuff that makes history, such as the tsunami blogs/photos or the London bombing photos--are different in scope than other types of blogs. The reason they often go out without editing is the urgency of the situation--and that they are first-person. In those cases, editing could amount to censoring of timely visual information.

Which brings up the point as to when an editor becomes a censor. Editing for creating a coherent, readable product that is balanaced and judicious is important. Editing to hold back information because of an agenda is another thing totally--which seems to be what's happening with a lot of the coverage of the Middle East. Is that editing or censoring? Is the end-product good journalism or propaganda?

Wonder how Schorr would answer those questions.

How that cranky Media Guy almost made coffee come out my nose:

Did you catch the recent New York Times article about the rehabilitation of the word slut? Pulitzer Prize-winning D.C.-based Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd did. She wrote a whole column about it and helpfully rounded things out by doing some original reporting. Specifically, she interviewed her "23-year-old assistant, Ashley" "my classy 26-year-old girlfriend," "one 24-year-old Washington reporter" and "one 25-year-old writer in D.C." Thanks for reaching out, Mo.

You know, I was going to write a column this week that would consist of my interviewing my boyfriend, my cats and my toaster-oven about what they thought of Maureen Dowd's Times piece about a Times piece -- but instead I'm turning it into a screenplay for a Lifetime miniseries.

bwahahahahaha! (and the rest of the article's pretty funny too.)

Outing Integrity Corporation

What is the Integrity Corporation and why do their bots keep crawling my blog?

close to 50% of the hits to this blog today have been from Integrity Corporation. This usually indicates an aggressive bot that is scraping my blog content.

I have tried to speak with Integrity Corporation about their bots, but no one will even acknowledge that this is happeneing.

How do I know? I check my stats. They are there under "domain" as the source of the hit. When I check futher, the ISP is Peer 1 Network, located in San Antonio, TX. The computer they are using is the same one (although I only have a partial number.)

Who are these people? Why are their bots constantly crawling my blog?

I want an answer.

Update: Yes, I got an answer. Not from Identity Corp., but from a friend who knows about these sorts of things. He says I shouldn't be bothered about it, but I still am....strangely, this company's bots haven't been around lately.

Are Bloggers Journalists? Pew Sez Most Think Not

Here's a giant news flash for *some* journalists (yes, you know who you are) out there who've had their knickers in a bunch about the profession of journalism being molested and bastardized by "those bloggers": Pew discovers that most bloggers(64%)don't think of themselves as journalists.

Yes, that's right: 64 percent of folks who blog, who were surveyed by Pew between July '05 and Feb '06, don't believe themselves to be journalists.

Holy mother of pearl! What a (well-duh!) revelation!

So, all you former debate squad geeks can simply get over it now:
About 77 percent of blog authors, or "bloggers," said they post to express themselves creatively rather to get noticed or paid, according to the report, released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. About 34 percent of bloggers feel what they do is journalism--so those among you who really care about journalism can start having real conversations with this group of folks that could be called "citizen journalists." Most--I'd hazard a guess from knowing some of them-- are probably doing some very decent citizen journalism--with a method and some fact-checking and editing. Those are the folks journalists should befriend and be involved with--not criticize and deride--because most of them have very good reasons for what they are doing. They can articulate exactly why they are doing "citizen journalism" and I'm sure they'd be glad to share their reasons with you.

Oddly 8% of Internet users write blogs, while 39% read them. Yes, people are, for the most part, lurkers rather than joiners. But that's okay. There are always more book readers than book writers.

And there are always more voyeurs than participants.

Blogging then, for most of The People, is about expression, being creative, and conversation. It is only about journalism when the blogger decides it should be--and only about a third have made that decision.

Why some journalists and ivory-tower types have, over the years, had trouble getting with the facts that Pew confirms (and I've known since I started blogging) is simply that they do not read or listen to "The People" that they always flap their gums about. Do they want the world to bend to their will because of some over-inflated sense of self-importance? IMHO, a good remedy would be to stop talking among themselves, grow backbones, and start talking to The People. The People are not their servants nor subjects whose will needs to bend to their theories. The People--or, more appropriately in this case,The Users--know what they are doing, why they do it, and will be very glad to talk about it.

As far as I'm concerned, Pew's study confirms what I have been saying all along about my own blogging and the blogging of many of The People I know. Further, Pew confirms what I've always said about my personal blog: that it is on-going memoir and conversation, not journalism. What I do here on this blog is commentary and could, under certain circumstances, be a form of citizen journalism because of its content. But, neither blog is the journalism that I do for Corante or the journalism I've done for other publications. It is by directing my writing on a certain subject, and by having that writing go thru an editorial process,my accepting the process, and that I made money from it, that I can call myself a journalist.

The People know what they are doing, and why they are doing it. The People don't have a problem with journalism being journalism, and The People don't have a problem with blogging being blogging. The People know what blogging is and what journalism is, and know that the preponderance of what they are doing is not journalism. The People who want their blogging to be journalism, more than likely, know what they are doing--otherwise they wouldn't answer affirmatively to the question about their blogs being journalism.

I know the debates aren't over, and I'm sure there will be so many who will want to debate Pew's findings. But if I had the money, I'd send the folks at Pew a huge basket of gourmet muffins just to thank them for throwing down this wonderful gauntlet and sticking it to all those folks who so want to use blogging (and bloggers) to support their own personally-held ideologies and agendas.

The People have spoken. Now, all You need to do is listen.

Update From one of the Pew researchers: "Much of the public and press attention to bloggers has focused on the small number of high-traffic, A-list bloggers. . . By asking a wide range of bloggers what they do and why they do it, we have found a different kind of story about the power of the internet to encourage creativity and community among all kinds of internet users."

Also: 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

yes, we like to write!


Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Me and Some of My Closest Blog-Ladyfriends are featured in an article on Mass women bloggers for the Boston Globe. A pic of me is here on Maura Welch's blog. cool!

Fave blogger Ron Brynaert has briefly re-christened his blog Why Ann Coulter's Godless Book Should Be Pulled while he focuses on convincing us why the aforementioned should be acted on accordingly. I hear ya, Ron!

Good News/Bad News

First the good news:

Some of you may know that, deep down, my greatest love is academic research related to media and religion. I've got the opportunity to work on three different projects connected with this True Love of my life....

The first two involve the interplay between religion and mass media--one project on the use of imagery by various Protestant denominations. The second is on the incursion of the KKK in Worcester, Mass in the 1920's.

Apparently, the prior research I've done on both topics is needed somewhere. The projects will be "citizen journalism"--but only in the sense that they are self-published to the web.

Why? Because most publications won't touch the subjects no matter how well-researched they might be. They are "hot button" projects, not very Politically Correct--but, in our current social climate, they are needed. Even if the mainstream is too wussy or only wants research like this from approved academic institutions.

The third is a project with a broadcast journalist, so it's a different kind of journalism--but journalism. I'm the researcher--because there's stuff that, apparently, I'm an expert on...

I'm also working on an opportunity to do some lecturing in communications...because, oddly, I've built something of a career out of blogging (as nascent as it may be)

So, over the next month or so, *this* blog will be going dark...

I'll still be writing for the Corante Media Hub (I need to put *some* food on the table--besides, I really like that job! first one I've liked in years)...

I am also contributing to Poynter OnLine's E-Media TidBits column. This is a wonderful priviledge, and I need the time to concentrate to write appropriately for Poynter...

And I'm still blogging at my girly blog--life doesn't stop happeneing and the writing over there is some of the best un-professionally published stuff I've ever written.

So what if it isn't hard-hitting and topical all the time. It's great writing. You'll like it. Heck, I may even blog about networked journalism and the people formerly known as the audience...but it'll be different.

I could care less about my Technorati Rank, too. What's it going to get me at this point compared to a well-researched piece of scholarship on something nobody knows a darned thing about? There's something terribly satisfying about watching people's faces light up when you tell them some piece of history they never knew.

I've contacted the library at my alma mater and will be breaking out the 3x5's again (yes, I have a laptop, but old habits die hard.) I'm looking forward to days in "the dungeon" reading copious copies of Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and Film Quarterly.

Honestly, that's my idea of a grand summer vacation...

and if you're going, I'll see you at BlogHer!

Media Giraffe: A Final Note

I've been bopping around the blogosphere over the past couple of days, and I knew what I said at the closing wouldn't be heard quite the way I meant it (must learn to sync mouth and brain)...

When I said that I only saw "people' in the room, I meant that there was no difference between the people and the journalists who were there...there was no us-them. We were all People.

My frustration was with the great number who had left after the Wednesday dinner, who were wringing their hands over the '04 election, or who left by Thursday lunch.

That was the sad thing. Many of them didn't get to meet many of us who were in the room.

When professionals--be they doctors, dentists, lawyers, journalists--never bother to talk with the people, how can they understand what the people are doing?

Too few are having experiences like John Donley's or Teresa Hannifin's (at Boston Globe) or are conducting the great experiments that go on at WashingtonPost.com....too few journo schools are doing the cool things that Paul Grabowitz talked about. And SPJ is really priviledged to have a leader like Dave Carlson.

Am I expecting too much? Is it that so much of this is still in its infancy? Maybe that's what my concerns are--maybe my concerns are that things *are* in their infancy and everyone has to be *very* careful. We can't afford to be wringing our hands over the past, walking away, turning our backs. We need to be in the same room, talking with one another, not about one another....

then again, maybe that's another conference. Maybe this was only the beginning...


MGP2006 Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging

Media Giraffe: Learning What's Next (and what's not)

I keep thinking about how there has been much discussion about disruptive technologies

It's not necessarily the technologies that are disruptive as much as it is how people use them.

People created craigslist and eBay and Monster.com. People create blogs. People use the medium of the Internet to do things they never thought could happen. Who knew we could get out there and have conversations with people all over the world without incurring huge telephone bills??

I am struck, though, how *some* journalists do not seem to understand that blogs are conversations. With the exception of a handful of big bloggers, most blogging is conversation between people. The internet is like a town square and these are our little soap boxes.

We really *do* have the right to have conversation--whether we call all those conversations journalism...well, that's for another (legal) debate.

Yesterday, the Media Giraffe Project Summitt
concluded. Today, I'm still dehydrated and burnt-out. Can't ever seem to get enough water at these things. There was a lot of info to process, a lot of ideas and stuff going around that can't be explained post-conference

We were a small group at the end--people and journalists. We had our own takes on what went on, what happened in the four days. Many agreed that there was a lot of self-congratulatory stuff on the first days, and that at times there seemed to be two conferences (one for journalists, one for people) going on at the same time. Someone pointed out (and I forget who) that all of us in the room constituted a small group of people who are concerned about what's happening and want to do something about it (I would include some of those who had to leave before then end, too.)

Ultimately, my take is this: There are lots of problems in big newspapers that citizen efforts alone cannot fix. There are some good people who are aware of those problems (corporate ownership being a very big one) and who would like to see changes. What shape those changes will take, however, still need to be hashed out.

But pandering to the citizenry with "free blogs" and "get your voice heard!" stuff isn't going to help. If anything, in less-urban regions, might distract people from the real shenanigans that are going on in town governments--let alone keep them ignorant of what's going on nationally.

The people are not "zombies"--we are out here having conversations about all sorts of topics, and my sense is that papers want to control and co-opt those conversations by putting them under their umbrella. There's something about that idea that stinks a bit. I don't mind being listed on the local site, but I don't think I could write for them. I like writing for Corante because what I write about has a certain focus.

And I believe that local areas with only one newspaper need citizen efforts to be independent. Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent made that clear...as well as there being a need for independent investigative citizen journalism (via blog) on ePluribus Media (esp. the projects done by Ilona Meagher and Paul Thomas) and independent citizen journalism on tough topics like religious liberty being done at Talk to Action (Fred Clarkson and Bruce Wilson are men after my own heart! so great to find people who are local who share the same esoteric passionate interest)

Which leads me to what was, for me anyway, the most important part of the Summitt: meeting more local bloggers and citizen journalists (and where I learned that the small-town, independent paper journalist is just as much a "citizen" as anyone who works online.) There were so many that I can't even remember all their names. As Lisa Williams and I talked about, we need to have a place where we can list where we all are, what we do, and who we are. We need to be able to stay in touch with and support one another. Finding one another is the hardest thing. Once we do that, maintaining the connections won't be all that hard.

The citizen journalists and bloggers in New England need to be organized--and we need to do it ourselves. Our independence is more important than anything we might do to save the monolithic newspapers in most of our geographic areas.

Which leads me to those monolithic papers and big media journalism in general: stop trying to co-opt citizen journalism. There are bigger problems--corporate ownership, crappy content and sagging revenues--that can't be fixed by involving the citizenry in your efforts. If you want to continue to turn out a "professional" product, don't look to independents. Let independents do what they want to do--it is their right. All that can come out of absorbing independents--on the local scene esp.--is a wal-mart style journalism replete with overworked, underpaid and barely qualified journalists who will move on when they get a better opportunity (I have it on good information that this is already happening in many small towns.) In other words: take an inventory (or get someone to help you do it)of your own management and marketing decision-making, look at what's going wrong on the inside and fix the problems that have been building since the push for corporate ownership. Stop looking to the people to solve a series of complicated problems that they had not part in creating.

All in all, though, the Summitt was very successful. It got a bunch of us who are local, who may never have met otherwise, to finally meet face to face. It got some journalism professionals talk among themselves in a different way (Chris Peck and Steve Sila shephered that effort and stuck it out till the very end) and even if we're not on the same page or totally seeing eye to eye, more progress was made here than might have been made at other conferences...

Even if we couldn't break the Plexiglas Ceiling of journalism's upper echelons....in some ways, that can't be expected. They are who they are, and the only way things will change is from the bottom up....but not by making the "bottom up" efforts part of the bottom line. That's just not our job.

Update: here's a great follow-up from Ilona (and great comment from Cho) at ePluribus Media.

Update: John Burke's 6/29 post at Editor's Weblog quotes Helen Thomas:“Anyone with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist.” This is false. Anyone with a laptop now has a voice. Not all voices are journalism, nor do they purport to be. And all those voices don't need permission from the Establishment to have conversation. and Jeff Jarvis:“Let’s not make this another bloggers vs. journalist conference, not about competition, us vs. them… That debate is over... We should be talking about opportunities, success stories, invention, creativity...." we talked about all that at the citizen journalism track. Where were you, Jeff?


MGP2006 Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging

Embarassing conference moment #238 My cards have a typo. The addy for this blog is wrong and it ends up directing people somewhere else. Good thing I have some old cards with the right addy.

Media Giraffe: Getting to Work

It's 5pm. I just got done giving an interview on my views on citizen journalism for a documentary being done by a Cambridge TV station. If there's one thing that has stood out for me so far at this particular conference it's been meeting people who are local. As I explained to the young woman who was interviewing me, it's been difficult for people in W. Mass to find one another. Partly geography, partly because, unlike out in the eastern part of the state, we don't have a place that will support us or that we can use to hold meetings, etc. Maybe that's something that will evolve out of this conference. That would be a good thing.

Bloggers out here, like lots of bloggers, all have different reasons for blogging--but I think there are less of us out here (can't speak to the reason why) and without the auspices of a university, we don't have a place to rally. Hence, we don't find each other. I know that my talking about this conference helped get some people here. But I know there are other bloggers out here that don't know about me, don't read me, and didn't find out about the conference.

Some bloggers, too, are just private. They do what they do for their own reasons, but they're not particularly interested in meeting other bloggers or interacting with other bloggers. Most certainly, it is their choice.

I'm sitting in one of the later citzen journalism sessions. They're talking about setting up a post-conference space of some kind to post on. This track--the citizen journalism track--has been run very well. The people who have been speaking have been incredible, and are truly the ones to give the best information.

I don't necessarily consider what I do citizen journalism. Yes, I'm a citizen commentator--but not a citizen journalist (unless commentary is journalism--oh, it's all so darned subjective!). Mostly because I'm not reporting on or for a community. I write about a subculture--the blogosphere and the different groups that interact with it--mostly how journalism/journalists interact with it. The writings are my observations, or comments, or information I want to share. It was fun chairing the panel this morning...because what I've done with blogging interfaces with cit j and I understand what they're doing, and I think it's important. Everyone was very clear that what they're doing is not meant to replace journalists. They do what they do because they want to, and would eventually like to get paid, but it's not about the bottom line.

Newspapers are, nowadays and unfortunately, about the bottom line--about making a profit. About selling news. Even if there is a civic reason for reporting the news, the necessity for advertising, and the importance of the advertisers, is related to paying investors and the Profit Margin.

One thing I've learned in this is that ownership matters. Corporate ownership's wreaked havoc with so many papers. It may be time for some papers to be privately owned again. And if so, they will need to be more interactive with the community. The Community's been interacting in various ways, so they're going to want it.

Yes, there's a downside to private ownership....but my sense is that every paper will find its niche. Right now there's huge upheaval. But within the upheaval, we have to make sure that the few do not dictate the terms for the many.

Tom Stites of the Center for Public Integrity was the only person who spoke (video archives here) to the socio-economic and social class divide in all this. And it's not that people don't have access. They have access. As Stites explained, it's that the news is not relevant to their lives because the news that's printed is the news for a different social class. Those who are not part of a partiular social class are considere "waste readers." Tom is editor and publisher of UU Magazine The text of his speech is at Dan Gillmor's blog

Imagine that--people considered "waste." Like garbage--because they're not Big Spenders. It was sad, but important for *somebody* to actually *say* that this is what the problem is--a large swath of individuals who could be reading the new do not because they are considered "waste" and not worth marketing to.

So, It leads me to think that what big media, and big journalism gets, is its own fault.

Back to the session: it's not being recorded or taped. It's a small group of less than 20 people, but people are talking. Any journaists here? Theres a guy from the NYTimes--or used to be with the NYTimes. I'm not sure. But there are good things being said and done here. There is progress here.

I'm not sure if the other days represented any progress or if it was, as I said previously, just a giant echo chamber.

I'm thinking again about Tom Rosenstiel's disagreement with me yesterday. Maybe media's made some progress, but they still don't get it.

I ws talking with John Burke of The Editor's Weblog Turns out that we read one another's stuff (he reads the Media hub), and there was some agreement between he and I that there are aspects of the blogosphere that media *still* doesn't get...

We had a wonderful conversation about newsmedia around the world...how different is it is from here. I often read news from India, and Korea, and all over the place--mainly because it comes in my Google Alerts for "journalism" "media" and "citizen journalism." I'm fascinated by the ways the media is consitituted in other countries