OhmyNews International

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We have been running the new version of OhmyNews International for a few months now, and we’re ready for the next phase:

YOU.

We are looking for volunteers who are passionate about citizen journalism to help us curate the news about the news. Ideally, OMNI works the best when we have voices from around the world participating in the larger conversation about citizen journalism.

Here are the qualifications:

• Passion for citizen journalism as a topic
• Fluent in English
• Able to use sources reliably
• Able to communicate clearly with a distinct voice

If you are interested here’s what to do.

1. Contact us with the subject “Curator,” and tell us who you are and why you are interested.

2. If approved, we will work with you in creating posts.

3. After a trial period and approval of the Board of Curators, we will ask you to join us as a full curator.

Simple as that. There is no requirement for how many times you need to post, only when you find something interesting and relevant to citizen journalism.

We look forward to hearing from you.

OpenFile founder and CEO Wilf Dinnick said, “People are used to either a top-down model for journalism or the bottom-up approach that they get with social media like Twitter, but OpenFile is kind of in the middle.”

In terms of news content, reporters, and finance, OpenFile launched on May has  a mixed characteristics of mainstream journalism and citizen journalism and tries to take advantages of both sides.

It is very interesting how newly launched news sites identity themselves in the journalism arena. What features do matter for identifying themselves? — Trained journalists? Freelancer reporters? A top-down model? Local-based media? Community news sites? A hyper-local journalism?  A big media group? Or what else?

OpenFile Wants to Re-Invent Local Journalism (CNN Money)

Credit: Laram777 on Flickr (CC)

Jeff Novich (Planet Jeffro) wrote a piece summarizing the efforts of citizen journalists as “See, Snap, Post.” Don’t bother commenting as it’s a Tumblr blog, and Tumblr blogs are for one-sided conversations. Which means that the only way to respond is to create your own blog post. So David “DigiDave” Cohn did. He summarizes Novich’s opinions about CJ as this:

It’s trite: “See, snap, post” – there is no depth.

People are stupid. Or as he diplomatically put it “most people don’t understand the tenets of journalism.” But read that section of his post and you’ll see what he really wants to say is “people are stupid.”

It’s more about sharing than anything else (see: “see, snap, post”)

It doesn’t really accomplish anything – certainly not fact-checking the media (see: “See, snap, post”)

It’s not paid – so the quality is crap.

Too much bias. It isn’t accountable.

Both he and Megan Taylor responded in kind. Here’s part of Megan’s response:

Anyone capable of critical thinking is capable of doing journalism. It’s really not that hard.

I can’t speak for anyone’s experience but my own. I’ve worked in the media  few years and made a few observations that has led to my personal support for citizen journalism. Here’s the uncomfortable fact:

There’s not much difference between a paid journalist and an amateur journalist.

There were a few good journalists in the operations I worked at, but many of them were just as biased (all over the political spectrum) and ill-informed as anyone else. Some didn’t even leave the newsroom and just put together their stories via the police scanner and a couple of phone calls. It was embarrassing to have to correct a news anchor on the pronunciation of Slobodan Milosovic (this was in the late ’90s). The production crew was more informed of the issues than the producers and anchors. The interns and lower level reporters were the only ones who got their facts straight, mostly because they were hungrier.

And that’s how citizen journalists are. The word amateur comes from the Latin amo, which we all mean “love.” Amateur journalists do it for the love of journalism. There’s passion.

Citizen and professional journalists each have roles. A professional journalist has the time and resources to dig deeper into stories. But their handicap is the newsroom bubble. And those in the field rely heavily on the same sources.

It’s a fool’s assumption that professional journalists “understand the tenets of journalism” more than amateurs. I went through the same journalism classes as most reporters, and it was obvious that many were asleep during the lectures. At the same time, I have seen amateurs go into blogging and citizen journalism because they were tired of seeing these “tenets of journalism” falling apart and felt the need to revive them, especially after the extreme consolidation of the media that accelerated with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (at least on the American side).

I don’t see one side conquering the other but co-existing in a state of information symbiosis. Professionals can concentrate on the in-depth work while citizens explore stories outside the newsroom bubble.

Citizen Journalism = “see, snap, post” (ie, not useful journalism) Planet Jeffro

I Call B.S. – Placing Old Values on Citizen Journalism DigiDave

Citizen journalism is NOT useless Megan Taylor

Some interesting academic papers regarding citizen journalism were presented in Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group of AEJMC (Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication). CCJIG (Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group) began in 1994 during the formative years of civic/ public journalism, which was focused on using journalistic practices to foster civic engagement. As time has passed, interests of the group and its membership have turned to new ways of expressing this engagement, especially through citizen-based participatory journalism, leading to a corresponding change of the group’s name to the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group in 2005. As blogging, hyper-local media, and audience contributions to online news operations of mainstream media have grown, CCJIG has developed into a vibrant community of scholars interested in research and teaching about these phenomena.

“Citizen Journalism and Cognitive Processing: An experiment on the perceived intent of traditional versus citizen journalism sources,” Heather E Akin, Melissa Tully, Gerald Stoecklein & Hernando Rojas

Using a three-wave longitudinal design with an embedded web-based experiment, this study considers whether manipulating the source of a news report (citizen journalism versus traditional journalism) affects perceived thought-provoking motivations. Results show that respondents perceive a citizen journalism source as intending to be more thought provoking about food issues than a traditional news source. Moreover, previous levels of engagement suggest that those who are less engaged with an issue are the ones who are more likely to see a citizen journalism source as intending to make them think. Findings and implications for future research are discussed.

“Gatekeeping and Citizen Journalism A Qualitative Examination of Participatory Newsgathering,” Amani Channel

For nearly sixty years, scholars have studied how information is selected, vetted, and shared by news organizations. The process, known as gatekeeping, is an enduring mass communications theory that describes the process by which news is gathered and filtered to audiences. It has been suggested, however, that in the wake of online communications the traditional function of media gatekeeping is changing. The infusion of citizen-gathered media into news programming is resulting in what some call a paradigm shift. As mainstream news outlets adopt and encourage public participation, it is important that researchers have a greater understanding of the theoretical implications related to participatory media and gatekeeping. This study will be among the first to examine the adoption of citizen journalism by a major cable news network. It will focus on CNN’s citizen journalism online news community called iReport, which allows the public to share and submit “unfiltered” content. Vetted submissions that are deemed newsworthy can then be broadcasted across CNN’s networks, and published on CNN.com. This journalism practice appears to follow the thoughts of Nguyen (2006), who states that, “future journalists will need to be trained to not only become critical gate-keepers but also act as listeners, discussion and forum leaders/mediators in an intimate interaction with their audiences.” The goal of the paper is to lay a foundation for understanding how participatory media is utilized by a news network to help researchers possibly develop new models and hypotheses related to gatekeeping theory.

“Perceived Role Conceptions of Citizen and Professional Journalists: Citizens’ Views,” Deborah Chung & Seungahn Nah

This study aims to identify citizen journalists’ role conceptions regarding their journalistic news contributing activities and their perceptions regarding professional journalists’ role conceptions. Based on a national survey of 130 citizen journalists, four factors emerged for both citizen and professional journalists’ role conceptions: interpreter, adversary, facilitator and mobilizer. Perceptions of civic journalism values were also examined. Analyses reveal that citizen journalists perceive their roles to be generally similar to professional journalistic roles. Furthermore, respondents rated certain roles to be more prominent functions for citizen journalists. In particular, the citizen journalist role of facilitator was rated as significantly more important than those of the traditional press.

“Alternative and Citizen Journalism: Mapping the Conceptual Differences,” Farooq Kperogi

Although it is customary for some scholars to conflate citizen media and alternative media, I argue in this paper that they are different. In the new media literature, citizen journalism is conceptualized as online “news content produced by ordinary citizens with no formal journalism training.” Alternative journalism, on the other hand, is not merely non-professionalized and non-institutionalized journalism produced by ordinary citizens; it is also purposively counter-hegemonic and “closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of ‘objectivity’ with overt advocacy and oppositional practices.”

“Reconsidering citizen journalism- An historical analysis,” Justin Walden

The rise of Web 2.0 publishing platforms has understandably had a dramatic impact on a number of different communication processes and fields in recent years. One area that has been profoundly influenced by the newfound ability for “regular” Internet users to self publish is citizen journalism. This theoretical paper examines current and historical perspectives on the citizen journalism movement, giving particular heed to a review of how recent Internet technologies have given amateur reporters far more reach and influence. This graduate-student produced article traces how today’s political bloggers and videographers are countering some centuries-old journalism practices and rechanneling the activism that guided Thomas Paine and other American Revolutionaries. This paper concludes that citizen journalism today is poised to follow a similar historical trajectory of legacy media from the 18th century. This article also argues that academic scholarship needs to shed further light on this trajectory and the seemingly inevitable standardization that will occur with citizen journalism newsgathering practices and presentation styles.

More abstracts are available here.

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I mentioned before how expat bloggers in Korea have been putting the Korean mainstream media to task on their fast-and-loose approach to statistics regarding foreigners. Well, it looks like they got through to one newspaper, The Hankyoreh, which issued a retraction and an apology for saying that over half of foreign English teachers quit their contracts. The statistic that they mistook for quitting contracts (which was really less than 5%) was the number of foreign teachers in public schools (66%).

That’s a wee bit of a difference.

Really, how lazily was that stat scanned before the headline was written?

Andrew Marr gives citizen journalism and blogs a bashing.

NewStatesman recently published an article “ Citizen journalism will not replace journalism, says BBC’s Marr.” BBC’s former political commentator, Andrew Marr currently hosts The Andrew Marr Show every Sunday morning.

Andrew Marr, at the Cheltenham Literacy Festival, harshly dismissed citizen journalism and blogs. According to the Guardian, Andrew Marr termed citizen journalism as the “rant of very drunk people late at night” and mentioned that citizen journalism is not going to replace journalism. He also called bloggers “socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men.”

Citizen journalism will not replace journalism (NewStatesman)

UPDATE: Here’s an audio clip of Mr. Marr.

Jason Gillikin recently posted an article Citizen Journalism: A Primer in OpenSalon. You can also find this article in his business blog (http://www.gillikinconsulting.com). In this article, he proposed thirty-four suggestions to help guide aspiring citizen journalists better understand the craft and practices of a the media world.

Let me introduce some items of Jason’s Journalism Primer here. Any other observation to add on the list?

• A writer’s best chance at distinguishing himself and making a genuine difference is to become a beat reporter.
• Journalism is about access – to people, to data, to authority.
• Be completely honest.
• Remember the traditional news values: Timeliness, currency, weirdness, conflict, proximity, personality, and relevance.
• Know and honor the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.
• Understand the state of media law with regard to libel, public access and fair reportage.
• Scrupulously honor “off the record” comments, but be wary of going OTR in general.
• A good journalist will go to jail before giving up a source.
• The cardinal rule of fact – it it’s not documented, then it didn’t happen.
• The cardinal rule of fact-checking – It in doubt, leave it out.
• Consider the trustworthiness of sources and the origination of facts and statistics.
• Use the right story template.
• Opinion belongs in by-lined columns.
• Know the AP Stylebook and keep it holy.

Citizen Journalism: A Primer (OpenSalon)

Paul Bradshaw at Online Journalism Blog wrote a piece for Podnosh.com about hyperlocal bloggers and how they view their roles, particularly regarding local governments. Bloggers feel it’s their job to find information buried in city council websites and make it visible and presentable to their readers.

If this is not the root purpose of journalism enabling democracy, I don’t know what is.

Now, I’m writing from my viewpoint in South Korea as an expat. And this is definitely the role a lot of blogs play, at least part time. Gusts of Popular Feeling digs up statistics and historical periodicals to keep the local press and government in check while putting current issues in a broader context. Brian in Jeollanam-do, Chris in South Korea, Seoul City Blog and Roboseyo each have gone into government websites (one of them is a government website) to clarify issues regarding immigration and taxes. And a good many of these blogs have put the spotlight on collusions with government officials and police with a particular Korean anti-immigrant hate group.

In short, bloggers are the journalists that journalists should be.

‘Making it findable’ – the creed of the hyperlocal blogger (Podnosh.com)

Leonard Pitts Jr. who is a columnist in Miami Herald recently published his article “Citizen Journalists? Spreading Like a Cold.” In the article, he strongly mentioned that he does not believe in “citizen journalism” with James O’Keefe III‘s example.

“Citizen journalism,” we are told, is supposed to democratize all that, the tools of new technology making each of us a journalist unto him or herself. It is a mark of the low regard in which journalism is held that that load of bull pucky ever passed as wisdom. If some guy had a wrench, would that make him a citizen mechanic? If some woman flashed a toy badge, would you call her a citizen police officer? Would you trust your health to a citizen doctor just because he produced a syringe?

It is an interesting article that show an insight of mainstream news people toward citizen journalism and citizen journalist. If you get a chance, take a look at Tree Sonorans‘ response to Leonard Pitts Jr., “Citizen Journalists and Their Role“, published in Tucson Citizen.

Citizen Journalists? Spreading Like a Cold (Miami Herald)

Citizen Journalists and Their Role (Tucson Citizen)

We reported recently on Jan Schaffer’s (J-Lab) findings in her research on community news sites. Alan Mutter (Reflections of a Newsosaur) chimes in with his comments, particularly about the economic sustainability of such projects. One-third of organizations funded by J-Lab’s New Voices have gone belly up, and the rest survive because of sacrifices made by the organizers–as in little or no pay.

Yet Mutter points out that the survival rate of the New Voices projects mirrors that of American small business start-ups.

So how can community news sites become businesses without sacrificing their, um, souls?

Actually, before commenting here, read the comments on Newsosaur.

‘Community news sites are not a business yet’ (Reflections of a Newsosaur)