Comments on: The Old Guard Misses, Again, the Emerging Journalism Ecosystem

By: Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

Sarah Hinchliff Pearson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:43:48 +0000

Great post, Dan. I thought On the Media’s piece on this story was equally outdated, and I was surprised. Maybe Bob Garfield was just playing devil’s advocate, but his questions about whether journalists should feel slighted because this award went to a non-journalist seemed to completely miss the point.

By: Ron Ross

Ron Ross — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:33:48 +0000

Thanks Dan – good blog!
In our new book, Handbook for Citizen Journalists, we define four levels of journalism. The level of journalism Rappleye is referring to would be in the category of ACCIDENTAL journalist. Any citizen who treats an injured or ill person as an act of human decency is an ACCIDENTAL medic. In the same manner, any citizen who reports news from an unexpected event, is an ACCIDENTAL journalist. We know that citizens can be trained as journalists just as they can be trained as medics.

By: Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:54:24 +0000

Dan: Good post. What makes the faint praise for citizen journalism all the more frustrating is that the Neda video was nothing new. In 1996 a banker and amateur photographer named Charles Porter won a Pulitzer for his picture of a firefighter holding a fatally injured baby outside the Oklahoma City bombing site. Because Porter sold his photo to a mainstream media outlet, I guess he was sanitized, and no one had to think about the implications of ordinary people engaged in acts of journalism.

By: Dennie Williams

Dennie Williams — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:58:37 +0000

Just so long as the citizen journalists stick to the facts and the truth let them go for it and be honored if they are honest, unbiased and good writers. But if they are talking heads, they need to be called such. Such bias is killing the credibility of journalism as an art and as a profession. It is helping the formation of superficial parties like the Tea Party and it is creating fodder for the far right to attack even if such attacks are frivolous!

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:27:07 +0000

Matthew, I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t mean to suggest that there’s only one role for non-professionals in the new ecosystem. There are many.

By: Matthew Terenzio

Matthew Terenzio — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:21:26 +0000

Thanks Dan. Well said.

I’d also like to see more recognition for web applications that discover, aggregate and present useful information. These are acts of journalism themselves. For too long they have been looked at in the way that news organizations looked at the “production” department in the past.

A good SQL query, for example, is tantamount to a reporter asking the right question. Displaying it in a usable way, is the equivalent of writing well enough for the readers to understand the story.