Author: knc

More and more people are asking the basic question – “Is the mainstream media covering the stories that are important to me?”

More and more people are asking the basic question – “Is the mainstream media covering the stories that are important to me?”

The rise in prominence of people-powered news websites gives me a pretty clear answer – no. Well, at least for the millions and millions of people who are looking elsewhere for their news and opinion.

This is just the kind of question that Jason DeRusha asks in his recent article for Minnesota’s CBS-4. Here’s a little of what he has to say about it:

On the cusp of a presidential election, and the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, there’s a move in Minnesota to train an army of citizen journalists.

“We want to be able to harness the power of citizen journalists for the good of the United States,” said Jason Barnett, Executive Director and Founder of The UpTake.

According to Barnett – his organization is training over 100 people to be active citizen journalists. Although, I would tend to think that this is close to moving them out of the realm, it’s something that could help raise the quality citizen journalism for the event in general.

It’s websites like Uptake, Newsvine, OpEdNews, AssociatedContent, DailyKos, BoomanTribune and many others which are brining the writings of citizen journalists to people all over the world. In their own way each provides a space for virtually anyone to report – and the communities that read each site will often determine how much prominence an article will get.

The growth of sites like this is attracting the attention of some major backers too. It’s the goal, for example, of the Knight News Challenge, which is giving away development cash of about $5 million for “innovative new media projects that serve the needs of local communities.” Proper funding, long an achilles heel for anyone trying to break into the news market, becomes less of an issue with funding projects like Knight’s.

Recognizing that this kind of hi-tech citizen journalism will continue to grow as long as contributors believe they are making an impact, mainstream news outlets are becoming more and more ready to work with sites like these.

According to Associated Press Managing Editor for Sports and Multimedia Lou Ferrara , “More and more people are going to contribute stuff this way,” he said. “We want to be in a position where we can capitalize on that.”

And that’s the key. If citizen journalists weren’t providing something valuable – something that a lot of people wanted – there wouldn’t be anything for a big business like the AP to want to capitalize on.

As long as the demand for this kind of reporting continues to grow I’m sure that more mainstream outlets will be looking to do the same.

–James Stone

The Knight Foundation has given a $1.5 million grant to help NPR increase its expansion into digital news. The investments intend to speed the news industry’s digital transformation and accelerate NPR’s transformation into a public media company.
The Knight Foundation has awarded $2.8 million to the University of California, Berkeley to increase its multimedia workshops for journalists and $2.4 million to the University of Southern California to increase its leadership workshops and special topic seminars for journalists.

An additional $1.5 million grant will help NPR work with the Knight Digital Media Center as the non-commercial news organization increases its expansion into digital news. The investments intend to speed the news industry’s digital transformation and accelerate NPR’s transformation into a public media company.

The Knight Digital Media Center will increase its training and become a ‘virtual center’ to help journalists succeed in the 21st century. A key part of that effort: helping NPR retrain its workforce to be increasingly competitive and effective in the digital age.

Over the next five years, the Knight Digital Media Center will provide:

• –400 diverse journalists with multimedia storytelling training.
• –160 editors with special technology training.
• –Four newsrooms with on-site transformation workshops.
• –A redesigned portal web site to train more than 20,000 web users with distance learning and offer an array of Knight-funded training/learning programs focused on transforming journalists and news organizations for the digital future.
• –An annual “New Leadership Conference” with editors and online managers from leading news organizations.
• –Annual seminars on “Decision-making for Portal Editors,” “Best Practices of Specialized Journalists Online” and “Timely Topics for Digital Journalists.”
• –An annual workshop on “Managing Multimedia Multiculturalism” for 20 newsroom leaders, sponsored by USC and The Maynard Institute.

Within two years, the grant to NPR, working with the Knight Digital Media Center, will train:

• –About 600 NPR staff in its new audio production and content management systems.
• –40 NPR senior managers, leaders and training staff to support’s NPR newsroom of the future project, “Newsroom 2.0.”
• –400 NPR reporters, producers, editors and other staff in multimedia skills.

“We are honored that Knight Foundation recognizes the public service mission of NPR News and the American public’s interest in finding our journalism on all platforms and in all the places they want it,” said Ken Stern, chief executive officer, NPR. “NPR has made a significant commitment to transforming our reporting, storytelling and production efforts to multimedia, and this grant will play a critical role in the comprehensive project we have launched. Knight Foundation has supported NPR and our journalism in the past, and today’s grant will be integral to NPR’s future.”

The Knight Foundation also funds innovative projects such as NewsU, which is online training for those interested in becoming journalists. It also funds the Knight News Challenge, which is a contest that offers $5 million for digital media ideas that “foster community”.

“You would think that’s pretty easy,” says foundation spokesman Marc Fest, “but last year only 200 applications ended up meeting all contest requirements and being innovative at the same time.” It’s well worth reading the rules, because, according to Fest, 26 of last year’s 200 finalists won a total of more than $12 million. The deadline for applications this year is Oct 15, 2007. Apply online at www.newschallenge.org.

Further Information:

• –The Knight Digital Media Center is a partnership between two top journalism schools, USC’s Annenberg School and U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The center has trained hundreds of midcareer journalists to better cover complex topics ranging from immigration to water quality. Its alumni have won numerous reporting and editing awards. Their improved journalism has been read, heard or viewed by millions of Americans.

…The book “100 Young Americans” is a sociological study of American youth – a look into their lives in a way that most of us just can’t experience…

Getting a grasp on what being a youth in America is like these days takes plenty more than a few years in a classroom.  So many people see the culture and counter-culture of American youth through a looking glass, and very little else.  But, how can anyone understand the different lifestyles and cultures of the young without going out and spending time seeing their lives firsthand?
 
Well, this is just what photographer Michael Franzini did to put together his forthcoming book, 100 Young Americans, which I am lucky enough to have received an advance copy of.  Michael is a youth culture expert, and Emmy Award-winning director and photographer from Los Angeles.  He’s spent years working with Public Interest, a non-profit ad agency that he founded to create youth-targeted advertising for MTV and many other networks.  But, there was one important question that he wanted to answer:  What does it really mean to be an American youth today?

Wanting – needing an answer, what’s a person to do?  In case you haven’t guessed it yet, Michael went on a nationwide search.  From Alaska to Florida, from Maine to California, Franzini traveled to all fifty states to try to get a firsthand look into life as a young American.

Speaking to hundreds of diverse teens – including a broad array of ethnicities, cultures, socioeconomic groups, and educational backgrounds – he set out on a journey to learn what it truly means to be a young adult in the United States.   The result?  A photojournalistic masterpiece.  The book is a profile of 100 young people from diverse backgrounds and interests.

This is how Harper’s International, the book’s publisher, describes it:

Misty is a devout Christian who lectures about abstinence and virginity at high schools across the country.

Kohl has a boyfriend named Kohl who lives in a different state. They talk online every day but have never met face to face.

Blessing emigrated from Nigeria when she was 7. She graduated at the top of her high school class and is now a Harvard pre-med freshman.

Boris got his first tattoo at 16 and now he’s addicted. At 19 he already has 35 of them.

These are just four of the many teens you’ll meet in One Hundred Young Americans, the first book to paint the full picture of youth culture in America today.

Gorgeously photographed and meticulously researched, this year-long project represents photographer Michael Franzini’s 30,000-mile journey in search of what it truly means to be a teenager in this hyper-connected, media-driven society. Unlike previous generations, these young people have all grown up with unprecedented access to media and information, and their private lives are more public than ever before.

Inside, you will read stories that will inspire, move, excite, and even anger you. Along this journey, you will meet people who share your experiences, who remind you of others, and who are unlike anyone you have ever met. What they ultimately have in common is that they are struggling to find their identity and become independent. They are growing up.

For each of the 100 young people profiled in the book, he spent hours interviewing them and their parents, capturing the conversations on video and taking rolls and rolls……and rolls of photos.

Through images and stories, this book examines the social worlds of young people.  But, Franzini doesn’t do it like a textbook or classroom would.  Instead, he explores their lives in their natural environments; from their suburban bedrooms to their urban streets; from shopping malls to music, backgrounds, school and even dropping out.

They are the digital generation.  They are, in many ways, like young Americans from the past – upbeat and anxious to make something of themselves – and motivated to make a positive difference in the world around them. 

But, in other ways, the youth of today live a life like no young generation before them. This generation is the most marketed to in history, from a much younger age and on several different screens at home, at school and just about everywhere else.  In many ways, you can see this and the reactions to it – from those who follow, to those who lash out and rebel; from those who are part of the mainstream culture to those who are part of the modern subcultures.

As life for our young people changes, so must our way of teaching and reaching them – and connecting with them.  How can we effectively enable them to be involved in their communities?  How can we provide them the tools to shoot for every goal and dream they may have?  How can we give them the greatest number of opportunities as possible?

In order to answer these essential questions, or even try, we need to be able to at least grasp of little of what their life is like.  Michael Franzini does a great job of bringing that life to us.

At the end of the day, 100 Young Americans is a sociological study of American youth – a look into their lives in a way that most of us just can’t experience.  It’s a celebration of their culture through amazing photography and powerful stories and narratives. 

So what does it mean to be an American youth today?  Get the book.  The answer just might surprise you.

…Seems that some in the established media are using fear tactics to convince people that citizen journalism is not a good choice for the future. One insider claims that people could get in “dangerous” situations, there’s scams & fraudsters out there, the media is just better, and the like. Sounds like he’s just protecting his job…
Today, I came across quite an interesting editorial over at the Philadelphia Inquirer – warning of the “dangers” of citizen journalism. Not surprisingly, it was written by someone who’s part of the industry. Larry Atkins teaches journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University. Here’s a few tidbits from his piece (and I don’t use that term lightly):

Benefits from citizen journalism include dramatic photos and videos that add insight to news events. After all, media outlets and their reporters can’t be everywhere. However, there are drawbacks and dangers that shouldn’t be ignored. For one thing, encouraging I-reports from disaster scenes, crime scenes, or natural-disaster areas could lead people seeking their 15 minutes of fame into dangerous situations. It is inevitable that future I-reporters will chase tornadoes or run toward police shootouts to get a better angle.

So argument #1 against citizen journalism is fear. If people go out and report on things (or just do things in general, I guess), they could get into “dangerous” situations. And, that appears to be something that’s bad, according to Larry. Interesting. Driving is “dangerous” too – should we leave that to the professionals? Wait, there’s more:

Other concerns are bias, conflicts of interest, and credibility. Some citizen journalists might submit reports to promote certain agendas. Of course, there is the potential for scams, fraud, and doctored photos and video. People might stage phony incidents. The fact-checking and source corroboration involved in mainstream media are usually absent from citizen journalism.

Either Larry thinks that professional journalists are of a higher moral standard, or this is yet another absurd argument. The reality is this: the marketplace weeds out bad journalism when it’s allowed to do so. You see, Larry, journalists report on other journalists. And, if some scam-artist blogger decided to start making up stories, they’d be outed pretty quickly by other reporters. The growth of this industry will bring an improvement to journalism as a whole – and yes, even to your sacred cow, the “mainstream media.” Well, it appears that Larry has a solution to the “problem” of someone like you getting too influential as a reporter:

To avoid these pitfalls, news outlets that solicit citizen journalists should set standards and issue warnings to safeguard amateurs. The Citizen Media Law Project, jointly affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Citizen Media, has been established to provide tools for citizen journalists. It plans to develop a legal guide that will cover insurance; privacy; access to meetings, records and property; and how to use freedom-of-information laws. ChiTownDailyNews.org plans to recruit and train 75 citizen journalists, one for each Chicago neighborhood, to work with editors to produce a daily news report.

Not much effort here. His solution is quite clear. Take independent journalists (at least the ones that the current media conglomerates like) and bring them into the fold. Still call them citizen journalists, but have them work for you, instead of competing with you. What a surprise. In closing, Larry gives his vision of the future:

Citizen journalism is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be viewed as the future of journalism, a substitute for professional reporting by established media. Citizen journalism should augment media coverage, not replace it.

Protectionism. Plain and simple. What “should” happen is whatever the consumers of media coverage want. If they’re happy with the established media, those businesses will grow and thrive – because that’s what the paying public wants. But, on the other hand, if the people are sick and tired of the established media, then they’ll go searching for something else. Just a casual look at the numbers will show that what’s happening is the latter. So, Larry, instead of protecting a future loser, maybe you should switch teams? You know, you could start teaching some great classes….like…”Citizen Journalism 101″