In this session, we're discussing how to engage and maintain audiences in old and new media. Quality draws an audience, whether it's a blog or traditional media, says Chris Magyar, Good Times editor and leader of the session, but also bloviating, spouting opinions, and specializing in topics have an appeal. A big theme coming out of the session is how the new media are breaking down the sense of shared community and communication, and the problem of how to maintain quality of the news.
Other participants are Ashley Beleny and Tom Honig, Armanasco Public Relations, Suzanne Yada, Public Press, Louise Yarnall, researcher/Public Press, Ben Temchine, KALW-San Francisco, local activist Jeff LeBlanc, and Scott Hawkins of Shakespeare Santa Cruz.
The historically compelling elements of media included the capacity to build a community and gain access to elected officials. Now anyone can gain access to all kinds of information with a click of a mouse. So, the central media have lost a monopoly on information. The traditional media model is suffering because so many people can get to the information without paying.
Journalists are now creating their own business models. Ben asked: Should journalists just be plumbers--do what the audience wants with kids sports, movie reviews, and restaurant reviews? Or should journalists still set the agenda and define what is important for public service and the larger society?
Jeff asked: How does public service journalism survive in a world where the audience is driving journalism into serving niche interests? Suzanne responded that one option is the non-profit, consumer-supported news: People will pay for the quality public service coverage.
Chris asks: When will the promise of citizen journalism be fulfilled? Ben replied that there have been concerns about quality of what is produced. The distribution method has been overtaken by the search engines and Internet. Are we taking the craft out of journalism and hoping to replace it with a lot of unskilled assembly-line laborers aka citizen journalists?
Louise discussed using new online tools to bootstrap contributions from new citizen journalists, helping them conduct small bits of the work so it's not too labor-intensive but obtains the valuable input from the community that they can provide. Tom says you need to support citizen journalists so they do not descend into rumor-mongering and slander. They need to respect values of truth. Beth called for greater attention to quality. Suzanne mentioned newsroom.com as a promising model.
Ben asks: How do you pay for public service journalism? If you don't go into silos or opinion-churning business, what can journalists add and why is citizen journalism bad, and how can you create some model for media? Chris mentions that money is leaking out of the media. IndyMedia is an example of slander and important breaking news, and it's useful to news. Chris says that the new citizen media can be a recruiting ground for new journalists.
Traditional media offer a mass, diverse audience to citizen journalists, not a niche audience. Citizen journalism involves many forms of media, according to J.D. Lasica (Wikipedia cite): 1) Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community), 2) Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report), 3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (OhmyNews, GroundReport), 4) Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin), (Newsvine), (HumanTimes), 5) Other kinds of "thin media." (mailing lists, email newsletters), and 6) Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as (KenRadio).[3] New media theorist Terry Flew states that there are 3 elements "critical to the rise of citizen journalism and citizen media": open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content. [4]
