OhmyNews International

Photo based on works by klinslis and Mike Licht on Twitter

Alfred Hermida at MediaShift has kicked off a series on how schools are teaching digital journalism, starting with the line, “Social media is such a new phenomenon that it is easy for someone to claim to be an expert in the subject.”

So true.

Please read the article to get some fascinating tidbits. Here are a few lessons being taught.

• How to use Twitter to enhance beat reporting
• Social media is not another tool to just distribute stories, it’s for conversation
• Social media can help develop story ideas
• Etiquette–as in, don’t blatantly post a message seeking information
• How to evaluate and manage your online reputation
• Online collaboration

How to Teach Social Media in Journalism Schools

Alan D. Mutter (Reflections of a Newsasaur) ponders how local newspapers can compete when large sites like the Huffington Post and now Yahoo! are posting localized content. He points out that local operations will have to shirk off their pay-to-read business models (papers are still doing that?).

Here’s another thought. Maybe nudging local newspapers to move to advertising models for their websites will help bring local advertisers out of their caves and take web advertising seriously. Even in super high tech Korea our local businesses won’t pay nearly as much for internet ads as they would for paper and broadcast, even if the websites have more eyeballs and greater interactivity for their messages. I’d say that this is partly due to print fighting against its perceived threat. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sales folks at these local newspapers have had a hand in maintaining this perception that print is for professionals and the web is for hobbyists.

If you think about it the local newspapers are more exclusive in their sources than, say, the HuffPo. Huffington actually publishes content from citizen journalists. When was the last time you saw anything in a local newspaper outside the “Letters to the Editor” that came from an local citizen?

Maybe a move like this–maybe–would make local newspapers more open to content from citizen journalists so they don’t have to resort to something like (gag!) Associated Content.

Yet Mutter brings up an issue that has frustrated the media in general, using the HuffPo as an example. Outlets publish the first couple of paragraphs from other outlets with a token link at the bottom. That works fine on an opinion piece, but news stories are written with the inverted pyramid model. All the most important info is in the first couple of paragraphs with the lingering historical information at the bottom. A reader can click on a headline on the HuffPo, scan the two paragraphs, and know everything she wanted to know about a story–no clickthrough required.

Possibly it’s the inverted pyramid method, which was originally created to sell newspapers on the stands, that is hurting operations’ bottom lines.

Local news rivals doom publisher pay walls

Credit: Tambako on Flickr

Brian McDermott argues that calling the Park51 Muslim community center and mosque the “Ground Zero Mosque” violates the journalist tenet to be accurate. It’s more of a community center than a mosque, and it’s two blocks away from Ground Zero. But calling it the “Ground Zero Mosque” as a convenient attention-getting headline (like I did above) implies that a full-blown mosque is being built right on or directly next to the Ground Zero site.

McDermott says it’s similar to calling the Lace Gentlemen’s Club in Manhattan the “Fox News Strip Club,” even though it’s two blocks away from Fox News headquarters.

He has a point. Why don’t we call the Lace Gentlemen’s Club the “Fox News Strip Club?”

What the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ flap says about the state of journalism

Credit: Jim Miles on Flickr (CC)

With each wave of new technology, there is a camp of luddites who refuse to evolve to the next step. Then came social media like Facebook, Google Buzz and Twitter. With everyone and his grandmother jumping on these social media platforms, the people who are jumping ship are high tech early adopters.

The most famous person has been Leo Laporte, founder of the TWiT network and the former face of technology on the old TechTV cable network. Leo still is the first to jump at new technologies, but he has grown fame-notoriety with the next gen of tech geeks by closing down his Facebook account.

Recently, a bug in Laporte’s highly followed Google Buzz account prevented his recent updates from going live.

And no one noticed.

He has vowed to return to macro-blogging.

TechCrunch’s Paul Carr has also quit Facebook, and he expands on Laporte’s discoveries. Are Twitter users too involved in their updates to read others’? When you neglect your blog for microblogging and social media, what will you have to show for it?

Considering that a lot of people started blogging as diaries, it’s a bit sad and maybe even nihilistic when people post their personal lives to be evaporated on Twitter and Facebook. It’s possible to keep track of those tiny updates, but what do they really tell about you when you look back on them?

UPDATE: And for an amusing comic about this, check out The Joy of Tech.

In our previous post, we talked about comments surrounding The Handbook for Citizen Journalists. Another thorny aspect is its section on earning press badges from the National Association of Citizen Journalists, which Jack Driscoll of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media condemns as licensing.

This is a thorny issue. Robert Niles, writing at The Online Journalism Review, argues that they are necessary, but he is taking the side against traditional media that claims that giving credentials to citizen journalists waters down the significance fo the credentials themselves.

Niles points out that traditional media is declining. Reporters are being laid of by the tens of thousands. With less reporters form traditional media covering the beat, it becomes more necessary to give credentials to citizen journalists.

In short, giving credentials to citizen journalists balances the asymmetry created when news organizations lay off their reporters.

This is becoming a bit of a hotbed issue right now inside citizen journalist circles and between citizen and traditional media, following the journalism.co.uk report on the fallout after citizen journalism wire service Demotix started giving out press passes to some of its contributors.

Watering-down press credentials, or denying citizens news? (The Online Journalism Review)

Demotix defends ‘press pass’ scheme after criticism from industry group

Carolyn Classen of “Carolyn’s Community“ on TucsonCitizen.com recommends the Handbook for Citizen Journalists by Ronald Ross and Susan Carson Cormier.  She values it as giving the training a citizen journalist needs having not gone to journalism school, including how to edit oneself, the importance of sources and how to avoid libel.

Jack Driscoll of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media also endorses it, saying it’s “half motivational and half tutorial.”

He points out that the book is honest with the state of citizen journalism, proclaiming its energy and entrepreneurial values and pointing out its tendency to attract legitimate criticisms.

Driscoll makes note of the controversial stance the book takes on “accidental journalism” and “advocacy journalism.” The book claims that accidental journalists, normal citizens caught in the middle of events who record them, are not true citizen journalists.

It also takes a neutral stance on advocacy journalism, where reporters promote a certain issue through their reporting, saying that as long as it’s transparent it’s fine.

A handy “Handbook for Citizen Journalists” (Carolyn’s Community)

The Handbook for Citizen Journalists: Catching the Journalistic Attitude (MIT Center for Future Civic Media)

Karen Gadbois is an example of citizen journalism’s  growing importance and respectability. Reporting on the destruction of neighborhoods in her native New Orleans on her blog, Squandered Heritage, she uncovered corruption in the New Orleans Affordable Housing (NOAH) program. This reporting, done in conjunction with local TV news reporter Lee Zurik, won her major national awards.

Thomas Hilbink of the Open Society Institute Blog has an interview with Karen Gadbois. Here’s a sample.

The entire interview is here.

Credit: Yutaka Tsutano on Flickr (CC)

Mobilisms argues that the HD video capabilities of the iPhone 4 will revolutionize citizen journalism, citing the release of the iPhone-shot short film “Apple of my Eye.” The article ponders how the iPhone 4 could have figured into something like the Iranian Twitter Revolution and points us to useful citizen video venues Allvoices and CitizenTube.

Mobile Impact: How the iPhone 4 Will Revolutionize Citizen Journalism

Professor Robert G. Picard was interviewed by Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group about the state of news and its future. He claims that it’s not economics that is hurting the news industry, it’s the quality of its product. He also details different models for success as well as different concepts for success.

“News organizations will rely upon a greater variety of revenue streams… and their proportions will vary”

Random Acts of Journalism starts out asking about the definition of “citizen journalism” and goes into different terms used in its place because of perceived political controversy.

Even though the post concludes that the term is a satisfactory buzzword, it is curious that the label “citizen journalism” can have a politically charged connotation.

What do you think? Does “citizen journalism” imply a political bias?