Steve Outing beschreibt ein gutes Beispiel von "People Journalism" im Zusammenhang mit dem Hurrikan "Isabel":
Some significant developments in the new media world have been swelling to change journalism recently. One of the most notable is the ubiquity of digital cameras, and the growing usage of cell phones with built-in cameras.

For this major news story, a growing number of East Coast citizens are snapping photos of hurricane damage that they see -- at their homes, during their travels around their communities -- and then sending the images, plus short text explanations, to news outlets. That's not entirely new behavior, of course, but the growth of digital cameras and photo phones is increasing the activity.

It's simple enough to snap a picture with a digital camera, download it to a PC, then e-mail it off to a news outlet. It's even simpler -- and much, much faster -- to snap a digital image with a photo phone, click a couple buttons, and immediately send off the photo of, say, a tree that's crushed a house.

News organizations are starting to get wise to this growing army of citizen camera- and phone-toting photojournalists, so Hurricane Isabel was a prime news story to put the public photos notion to work and request that the public send in photos and first-person text accounts of their hurricane experiences. Certainly not all news organizations in the storm zone are letting the public be part of the reporting process, but a growing number are.

Hier weiterlesen bei Poynter.org: Hurricane Victims, a.k.a. Amateur Journalists.

Ein interessantes Papier zu We-Media und "Participatory Journalism, von NDN (Shayne Bowman/Chris Willis):

A definative report on participatory journalism. Begins with an well define explanation and brief history into the creation of participatory journalist. Includes excellent examples with integrated resources of the various types and manifestations of participatory journalism. Most importantly, explains why participatory journalism is so important.

There are three ways to look at how society is informed.

The first is that people are gullible and will read, listen to, or watch just about anything. The second is that most people require an informed intermediary to tell them what is good, important or meaningful. The third is that people are pretty smart; given the means, they can sort things out for themselves; find their own version of the truth.

The means have arrived. The truth is out there.

Throughout history, access to news and information has been a privilege accorded to powerful institutions with the authority or wealth to dominate distribution. For the past two centuries, an independent press has served as advocate for society and its right to know – an essential role during an era of democratic enlightenment.

It feels like a new era has been thrust upon us – an era of enlightened anxiety. We now know more than ever before, but our knowledge creates anxiety over harsh truths and puzzling paradoxes. What is the role of the storyteller in this epoch? How will an informed, connected society help shape it? How does the world look when news and information are part of a shared experience?

We asked seasoned, visionary journalists – innovators like Dan Gillmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, and news media editor-author JD Lasica – to help frame a conversation about the promise and pitfalls of citizen-based, digital media in an open society.

Hier gibt's die 7 Kapitel zum Nachlesen: We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information.

Weblogs, or something very similar, were dreamed up more than 100 years ago by Jules Verne. In his 1890 futuristic "A Day in the Life of an American Journalist in 2890," he predicted that instead of being printed, every morning the news is spoken directly (IM'd?) to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, learn the news of the day. Each subscriber owns a recorder (hard disk?) to gather the news if he doesn't want to listen to it himself.

Although he was off by 890 years, Verne accurately predicted that people would want to get the news as unvarnished as possible. Weblogs are good devices for encouraging conversation, although they are still in very early development and usage. I expect to see them become more useful and more sophisticated in the next decade.
(Christopher Barr, Gründer von CNET Networks)

Nachzulesen im zweiten Teil der Serie von Mark Glaser bei der Online Journalism Review: For Pioneers of Web Journalism, the Future Is Still Full of Surprises

Den ersten Teil gibt's hier nachzulesen: Online News Pioneers See Lots of Changes in the First 10 Years.

Marc Glaser beginnt bei http://ojr.org mit einer Serie zur Geschichte und Zukunft des Online-Journalismus.

Erschienen ist nun der erste Teil mit als Experten:

John Battelle is director of the business reporting program at the University of California, Berkeley, founder of The Industry Standard, and co-founding editor of Wired.

Ana Marie Cox She was an editor at Suck.com, Feed.com, Mother Jones and Inside.com. She now lives in Virginia and works for a large multinational corporation and writes The Antic Muse Weblog when her bosses aren't looking.

Bernard Gwertzman is a longtime New York Times correspondent and editor whose last job for the Times was as editor-in-chief of nytimes.com (1995-2002).

Craig Newmark founded craigslist.org, a modest site where people can find a job or a place to live, or can address other everyday needs.

Dave Winer started the Scripting News Weblog in 1997, the longest currently running Weblog on the Net, and has written the online DaveNet column since '94. He currently is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

OJR: What's the most exciting new development in online journalism, and why?

Winer: RSS. Because it levels the field. On the same page I read reports from BBC, The New York Times and my favorite Weblogs. I'm not more impressed by Glenn Fleishman, for example, when he writes for his Weblog, or when he writes for The New York Times. It makes online journalism more competitive and it desperately needs more competition.

Gwertzman: The ease of browsers receiving news, and the smooth insert of multimedia into the news coverage. The advent of broadband everywhere means that it is so easy to receive news that it is revolutionizing the news business.

Newmark: Some of the group blogging and discussion mechanisms, like MetaFilter and Slashdot, but they're all in their infancy. I do agree that image-enabled mobile phones will become important, but filtering is the biggest deal in this area.

Cox: This space left intentionally blank.

Battelle: The resurgence of advertising revenue to the Internet content model. It will allow journalists to once again innovate online.

OJR: How important are Weblogs in the history of journalism, and how do they differ from personal home pages?

Winer: Weblogs drop the cost of publishing to near zero, making it possible for anyone with information or ideas to publish them. It's a huge change. Before, I used to get quoted occasionally by reporters, and they'd select the sound bites that were important to them, not me -- and they'd often mangle the quotes. It never served to get the ideas out that I wanted to get out. Now I can do it myself and have been since 1994. A lot of other people do it too now. About being different from the personal home page, geez, Weblogs are the personal home page. The difference is that Weblogs change and old PHPs were cute, and maybe a little snazzy, but never changed.

Battelle: Weblogs are quite important, I'd wager, in the way desktop publishing was in the late '80s. They democratize the printing press for the Internet medium. As to the second part of the question, the intent of a Weblog publisher seems, for the most part, quite distinct from that of a personal home page. Weblogs are updated frequently and content-driven, whereas personal home pages, at least in the past, have been "brochureware" for the most part.

Newmark: I think that they've started to provide first-person, really honest news, and some, like MetaFilter, are collecting news in serious ways that mean something. The good aggregators provide a good collection of trustworthy items, something personal home pages never do.

Cox: I don't know how important Weblogs are to the history of journalism. I certainly don't think that Andrew Sullivan brought down Howell Raines, if that's what you're asking. But there's an echo-effect at work right now that has made Weblogs seem influential, largely because traditional news organizations have bought the idea that they are.

That said, I think what's really revolutionary about Weblogs isn't their content, but the way that Weblog software has enabled technically unsophisticated people to produce aesthetically pleasing, well-organized Web sites. This is how blogs are different from personal home pages, and why blogging software could be to online journalism what PageMaker and Quark were to magazines: It may allow blogs to have the same effect on traditional journalism as zines did. Which is to say, a few big-name blog authors will get hired by major media publications to zing up their lame output. They will then become disillusioned and leave to write extremely mannered, hugely popular memoirs based on the experience of raising their orphaned little brother. (Is Glenn Reynolds destined to become the Dave Eggers of blogging? Discuss.)

Also, as it was for the short-lived zine revolution, the simplicity of the new technology has enabled some talented people without formal training to be recognized for their intelligence and wit. I am for this; the rewards of reading something great are well worth the hours of slogging though warblogs, moblogs, etc. Two of my own favorite blogs -- The Major Fall, The Minor Lift and (excuse the language) Dong Resin -- are put together by proudly unprofessional journalists. I find their content much more reliably informative and hilarious than pretty much anything published by people who get paid to do so.

Hier weiterlesen: Online News Pioneers See Lots of Changes in the First 10 Years.

Dass ein riesige Lücke zwischen den "akademischen" und dem Praktischen Journalismus besteht, ist ein offenes Geheimnis,... um hier den Versuch eines Brückenschlags zu wagen trafen sich Wissenschaftler und Praktiker anlässlich der AEJMC in Kansas City:

Geneva Overholser schreibt bei Poynter.org über das AEJMC-03 in Kansas City:

Earl Wilkinson, of the International Newspaper Marketing Association, in his speech presenting the list, complained about "academics talking to academics" and noted: "About 2 percent of the research being done is applicable to the business of newspapers, and you must have incredible patience to find the 'leads' to the stories in that 2 percent."

Anyone who has looked at the papers at AEJMC knows the level of patience Wilkinson is talking about.
Weiterlesen bei poynter.org: Two Percent of Academic Research Useful: Can We Raise That?.

Spannender Artikel in der Online Journalism Review mit den verschiedensten Ansätzen zum Thema: News Sites Still Figuring Out What to Do With Online Communities.

Does the idea of fostering online communities at news Web sites still make sense? A decade after author Howard Rheingold popularized the notion in his influential national bestseller "The Virtual Community," news executives still support the idea, but they're struggling to make the concept work.

"I think everyone's looking at how to organize this better, without destroying yourself with extra management and moderating work," says Hyde Post, editorial director of The Atlanta Journal Constitution's site, AJC.com.

"If done correctly, (online community building) would fit very nicely with our mission," agrees Gerry Barker, general manager for Belo Corp.'s Dallas Web sites, which include DallasNews.com, WFAA.com, and GuideLive.com. "I think it's probably an oversight to throw out the idea of community because it doesn’t make money."
Hier weiterlesen: News Sites Still Figuring Out What to Do With Online Communities.

Die "alt-ehrwürdige" BBC ist immer wieder für eine Überraschung gut. Neuster Coup: The BBC News Style Guide... und zwar online, kostenfrei und als pdf.

Bi-medial working has brought further complications. Story-telling with pictures is not the same as story-telling with words alone; organising your material on Ceefax or online presents particular problems. BBC writers need to be aware of the opportunities and limitations of the medium they are working for, and to adjust their style accordingly.
It is not always easy.

Bin beeindruckt ...

http://www.bbctraining.co.uk/pdfs/newsStyleGuide.pdf

[ Via poynter.org ]

JD Lascia hat eine interessante Serie zum Thema "Participatory Journalism" bei online Journalism Review publiziert.

Over the past few years, the outlines of a new form of journalism have begun to emerge. Call it participatory journalism or one of its kindred names -- open-source journalism, personal media, grassroots reporting -- but everyone from individuals to online newspapers has begun to take notice.

"It's about readers participating in the editorial process, and it's long overdue," says Dan Gillmor, a blogger and technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, who is writing a book on the subject called "Making the News." "People at the edges of the network are getting a chance to become more involved in traditional journalism by using many of the same tools of the trade. This is tomorrow's journalism, with professionals and gifted amateurs as partners." (...)

"It's difficult to figure out where all this is going to wind up," Gillmor says. "Journalism from the edges is taking us to a new place. The only thing certain is that we'll never return to the days when people are treated as passive vessels for content delivered by big media through one-way pipes -- no matter how disruptive these changes may be for traditional media.

Hier gibt's die Serie zum Nachlesen:

* Personal Broadcasting Opens Yet Another Front for Journalists
* Participatory Journalism Puts the Reader in the Driver's Seat
* What is Participatory Journalism?

[Via JD's New Media Musings]

Online-Chef der Spokesman Review Ken Sands äussert sich in einem Interview über die Zukunft der Zeitungen, die Rolle von online-Journalismus ,....und die Rolle von Blogs:

I love newspapers, and that's why I'm on the APME board. That board is filled primarily with -- sorry, pals -- middle-aged print publication managers who don't seem to know yet what to make of online journalism. Many of them, individually, seem so stressed trying to put out a quality print product in tough economic times that they don't think much about the Web.

I don't intend to be too critical of print editors. In truth, Web editors at many newspapers are in silos away from the print operation and frustratingly distant from print editors who want to collaborate with the Web. My goal is to help both print and online editors understand how much they need each other, and to argue for the elimination of Web silos. In other words, I hope to advance both print AND online journalism by advocating for better collaboration. I know that's a tall order, but you might as well aim high!

I do believe the "amateur" warbloggers showed us professional journalists the power of numbers on the Web. That is, if an army of "reporters" scour the Web to "aggregate" the news, why can't we use our local readers to help us aggregate the news of our communities? How about an army of local bloggers?

The best of their work might even show up in print! At the very least, by tapping into readers as sources, we will be in better touch with our communities and will get better stories.

It might seem ridiculous now, but the electronic edition will eventually become the center of the newsroom universe, with print and television the orbiting planets." Just don't tell my buddies at APME ... they might have coronaries.

....dem ist absolut nichts hinzuzufügen !

Das vollständige Interview: 5 Questions: The Pied Piper of Blogging
Spokane's Ken Sands Predicts You'll Be Doing It Too

[Via: Steve Outing resp. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ ]

Die neuste Kolumne von Steve Outing bei Editor&Publisher befasst sich mit Blogs und Newssites:

Blogs Have a Place on News Web Sites

I hope you're not sick of Weblogs (AKA blogs) yet, because they're not a fad that will go away soon. Blogs, it is becoming obvious to me, are where much of the innovation in online content is taking place.

Let's dig deeper into the intersection of Weblogs and journalism. (Not all blogs can appropriately be called "journalism," though many can.) Because if your news Web site isn't publishing blogs of some sort, you are, like, so 1990s. It's past time to get with it.

Outing sieht auch in Moblogs eine grosse Zukunft. Und sieht in Weblogs auch die Möglichkeit, ein jüngeres Publikum anzusprechen:

Chances are, if you say "blog" to a group of people in their teens or 20s, most of them will know what the word means. The percent in-the-know of an older group almost certainly will be lower. So some news sites -- most notably Lawrence.com -- are using blogs as a ploy to attract a younger demographic.

Outing präsentiert weiter auch verschiedene Einsatzmöglichkeiten von Weblogs: The Vertical Blog, The Inner-Workings Blog und the Action-Line" Blog. Aber auch das Konzept der "non-professional Writers" wird angesprochen:

The concept of community members writing for professional news organizations is hardly new. Blogging actually makes it easier for community members, because of the nature of the format. Blogs -- typically consisting of a series of short items -- take less time to write than traditional columns. So the bartender, the veterinarian, the child psychologist, the taxi driver, or the park ranger can more easily work a blog into their lives -- and offer online readers something worthwhile.

Hier zur vollständigen Kolumne von Steve Outing.