International Symposium - Take 1

Participatory Journalism

“How the old passive audience of mass media is becoming the new active communities of online media.”

Some Good Company.....

AT MY VERY BEST

What do we mean when we say.....

“Participation”

Cliffs Notes: It means doing things together.....

Transparency

• “For well-informed participation to occur, it is argued that some version of transparency, e.g. radical transparency, is necessary, but not sufficient.”

Necessary, not sufficient

• Necessary: Needed. Won’t work without it. Better have it, etc.

• It isn’t “sufficient.” - Having transparency alone won’t cut it.

Being a mammal is necc. to be a human, but not sufficient.

Journalism is a process - not a product

• Newspapers are a product

• News content is a product

• Journalism is a series of things you do: Collect, filter, distribute information

Freelancing 30 years ago

• Not that different today.

• It is an opaque process

Spot.Us and Freelancing• Freelancers pitching the world

Reporting Happens in Public

• The process of writing this crowd-funded story and of blogging about it is going to be a new experience for me. The old method of writing a story was to get approval from your editor, and then the story was something of a secret except for those who needed to know. When you were done, you published your story and you wowed the city with it, and made your competitors at other Seattle daily newspapers curse that they hadn't thought of it first. (Or, at least that was the fantasy that we journalists had.)

• So what's the process now? It's developing, that's for sure. I would be very interested in hearing suggestions for aspects of the story to cover, or things you'd be interested in reading in the blog.

What about Scoops!

• We need to hold onto them. We are clinging to them for dear life.

• Web radical response

• Conservative response

What’s the public perspective?

• Public is empowered.

• Why should editors have all the fun?

• Insight into freelancing (usually overlooked)

Participation has many forms• Contribute

• Money (Spot.Us)

• Time (Spot.Us)

• Resources

• Attention (Soon on Spot.Us)

• Expertise

• Etc

Journalism

• Anyone can do it. People who do it everyday are better at it. They should share their methods.