Talk With News: Experts Spout Off on Interactivity...
Changes are happening so fast that we "are moving at light speed towards when we drop 'new' from new media," Dan Gillmor said last night at the Hearst Annual New Media Lecture at Columbia University. Gillmor, author, former journalist and founder of the new non-profit Center for Citizen Media believes that the news is a conversation. "It is a collision of technology and media and this creates a democratization with collaborative community filtering allowing for wider and deeper participation," Gillmor said to an audience numbering well over 100 in the lecture hall of the Joseph Pulitzer-funded journalism graduate school. Well, MSM print are trying to be conversational. See this MotherPie post on MSM efforts (WaPo, NYtimes).
"In the age of mass participation, new media will co-exist with the old -- indeed, it is already increasingly hard to tell when one becomes the other," is how the Economist wrote about new media, warning not to be too afraid of the coming age of mass participation in an article called Talking to Yourself, 4/20. The Economist's survey of new media, Among the Audience wrote about how people no longer passively "consume" media but actively participate in them. The series of articles is behind a subscriber wall but offers very interesting perspectives on the changes currently underway.
Jeff Jarvis' blog, Buzz Machine, talks about the changes that the BBC is making with good links to articles here and how the BBC is wanting to partner with their audience with a philosphy of "share". Amy Grahan in an article on Poynter Online this week about Dave Winer's interview last week on Rocketboom. Grahan: "However, passion and personal involvement are part of life -- why shouldn't they be part (just part, mind you) of the news, as long as that is made very obvious? Why not offer a more complete version of the news by including coverage from both amateur and professional perspectives? If done well (and yes, amateurs can learn to produce high-quality news content), I suspect audiences would find such an integrated approach to news even more engaging and relevant. Rich context counts."
In an article this week in the Online Journalism Review asking if newspapers can do blogs right, Xeni Jardin (who reports about the intersection of technology and culture for NPR) raises good points about the purpose of interacting with the audience: "Is the point just to leave snippy comments on the blogs of your critics? Or is the point of interacting to provide bits and pieces and nuances of information that traditional newspaper reporting doesn't lend itself to?" The Editor's Weblog writes: "traditional journalism is not going to disappear...but the fact is, citizen media, and the plethora of opinion that comes with it, is not going to disappear either, and will more than likely evolve in leaps and bounds."
Some papers are getting it. Online News writes about the OJR article and points to other trends here. See earlier MotherPie articles New Media: MSM Tool to Close the Gap and Talk Back Newspapers, featuring the Santa Fe New Mexican. Other MotherPie articles: Conversatin' with the News, and Talk With News: Experts Spout Off. More on a micro look at the two-way conversations with the SFNewMexican next week...
Merinews starts a new era in news media in india. Citizen media or participatory journalism committed to bring about a change in how news is viewed. They aim towards providing an unbiased platform to voice opinions on anything and everything that touches our lives. This free flow of ideas, opinion and concepts will surely work towards enriching the society in more ways than one.
To participate in merinews's citizen media center, Please visit http://www.merinews.com.
Posted by: john saren | May 01, 2006 at 07:08 AM