Archive for June, 2007

Date: June 29th, 2007
Cate: Books, Current Affairs, Journalism Theory/Analysis
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Rise of the Amatuer, The Debate Continues

Making a big splash lately is “The Cult of the Amateur” by Andrew Keen.

A couple thoughts before I go into analysis.

1. Obviously an appropriation of Leander Khaney’s Cult of Mac (my old editor at Wired).
2. Business Week video interview here.
3. Jeff Howe’s thoughts: Coming from the crowdsourcing angle, Jeff is obviously on the other side of this debate.
5. Lessig’s tears the book apart
4. My initial reaction when I saw Keen in a debate at Personal Democracy Forum.

My favorite panel was the debate on the amateur – whether or not
everyone being able to take part in media is destroying our culture,
with Robert Scoble and Craig Newmark
on one end of the debate, Clay Shriky ridding the middle and Andrew
Keen at the far end. Robert Scoble was hilarious (as I expected).

I’ll give Andrew Keen credit for having the balls to say to this crowd
of bloggers that the democratization of media was a bad thing. I kept
waiting for someone to throw rotten produce at him.

But the debate seemed like a red herring to me. Should we only have
professionals doing the media or just let the amateurs have it?

Why is it an “either-or” decision? …..

So now a bit more.

A friend/colleague from Assignment Zero is throwing around an idea: Responding to Keen’s book with arguments formed by….amateurs. (I’m suggesting Debatepedia, but that might not be the ethos he wants).

Yes. A wikipedia-esque response to Andrew Keen’s thesis. I applaud the creativity. Let’s see if it happens.

I’m still left with one sour spot about Keen’s book. Why is everyone an amateur? At the Future of News Steve Boriss put it best:

Most who write for Old Media are professional journalists, but amateurs
in the topics they write about. By contrast, most of the leading, elite
bloggers are experts in their specialized topic areas, but amateurs in
journalism. Is the public really better off reading amateur-grade
information from journalists rather than professional-grade information
from non-journalists? More to the point, will they prefer it?

And just to go full circle. That seems to be what we experienced at Assignment Zero. As Jeff Howe put it when looking over the 80+ interviews that we conducted:

This is the beauty of open organizational systems. People
self-select, assigning themselves to tasks for which they are
best-suited. Contrast this with the process by which an interviewer is
assigned to interviewee in a closed system (a magazine or newspaper). A
journalist is often chosen to conduct a Q&A with a subject based on
his or her availability. That’s a pretty poor qualification, though
it’s borne of simple necessity. The professional in this closed system
(and I speak from personal experience), often lacks the time it takes
to adequately acquaint oneself with the subject’s work, ideas and
experience. If the resulting product feels a little rote and
indifferent, do you blame the journalist or the system?

But not only did the interviews betray a level of passion and
specialization rarely found in the mainstream media, they were simply
better reads. Magazines and newspapers tend to pasteurize such
interviews to filter out any content that any reader anywhere might
possibly deem offensive or obscure or simply irrelevant. The result is
something that’s leached of idiosyncrasy, complex ideas and the
accidental poetry that arises from an animated conversation.

Date: June 28th, 2007
Cate: Uncategorized

The Tubes of Content have opened — Networked Business Model

There was a bit of a stir when the Associated Press decided to warm up to citizen journalism, saying they

would consider content from NowPublic.

Around the same time, the BBC was ready to offer money for user-generated content (photos) too.

Photos are at the core of the prosumer revolution. Cameras are cheaper, it’s not hard to point and click, cameras don’t lie (in theory). Although the AP and BBC are limiting the content intake from citizen journalists to photos right now, these tubes will eventually get wider — perhaps one day including feature stories written by citizen journalists who have been producing great photo content for years.

Although not brand spanking new — the tubes flow the opposite direction too.

Check out The Newsroom. Anyone can take content from real news organizations, mash it up on their blog — and share in the advertising revenue.

Picture_1

Although it isn’t exactly networked journalism, it is a networked business model.

I’ll be honest, I’m checking out what content they have right now to see if there is anything that might be of interest to any readers I have.

But fear not: I would only post things that I think are editorially relevant to what I cover here — this way my readers (mom and dad….hi!!!!) won’t have to sit and watch anything that I don’t think fits the bill. For the most part — the content looks like "News at 10pm" type stuff — which I HATE. But the potential is there for something really cool.

Date: June 26th, 2007
Cate: Uncategorized
1 msg

Help Me Come Up With an Invite List to This Networked Journalism Conference

Via Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com

I am delighted to tell you that I’ve received a MacArthur Foundation grant at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism to start the News Innovation Project. Its first work will be to hold a meeting this fall to gather practitioners and best practices in networked journalism â?? cooperative, pro-am efforts to gather and share news.

So I would be grateful if you would leave comments here with examples of what you think is working in networked journalism: cooperative efforts by local newspapers and TV stations, new ventures that enable the community to gather news, people who do this well, and tools that are working. Iâ??m working with David Cohn (that’s me!), who covered this topic in the blog at Jay Rosenâ??s NewAssignment.net. Thanks to him, we have a pretty good list of whatâ??s happening. But, of course, thereâ??s more going on than, we know, so please pass the word and clue us in.

MORE ABOUT THE CONFERENCE BELOW THE FOLD

When I first applied for this grant, my goal was to evangelize the idea of networked journalism (nee citizen journalism). But in the meantime, we’ve seen such a blossoming of these efforts that we now believe the best contribution we can make is to share and extend best practices.

Before everyone gets here for the meeting, David will have written up reports on what these practitioners have done. That, of course, will be on the web for all to read and add to. This way, we can dig right in during the meeting and quiz some of these practitioners each representing different sorts of efforts on what works and what doesn’t and what they need to do what they do better (including what others in the room can offer them). At the end of the day, I hope to lock folks in rooms bloggers with newspaper people, newspaper people with new ventures and not let them out without returning with new things to do together, ways to push toward new experiments. And then David will followup and report on those efforts after everyone leaves
and gets to work.

The reason for all this is that I firmly believe that networked journalism is one “not the only but one” answer to the question of how journalism can be sustained even as the old business models of news and media shrink and shift. We also believe that technology and networking now allow us to join together as never before to gather more news, cover more parts of our communities, involve more people, even investigate investigate deeper. This isn’t about saving journalism.
Itâ??s about growing journalism.

The second effort of the News Innovation Project will be to hold another session on new business models for news. More on that later.

Unfortunately, our space “physical space” will be limited at the school. So I don’t think I’ll be able to open this to all comers. Of course, I wish we could. But we will do everything online: before, during, and after. And weâ??ll do everything we can to bring in everyone’s wisdom, experience, questions, and help wherever they are.

So please let me know who you think is doing great things in networked, cooperative, pro-am, innovative journalism.

I’ll send you to a web site as soon as we have more details. Thanks. (And thanks to John Bracken and MacArthur.)

Date: June 25th, 2007
Cate: Current Affairs, Future, Journalism Practice, Journalism Theory/Analysis, My Work
2 msgs

The Difference Between Crowdsoured News and Open Source News and Why We Haven’t Seen the Later

Crowdsouring is a topic mulling around in my head lately. In part because Assignment Zero is coming to a close. Also because I’m helping Jeff Howe research for his book on the topic.

Crowdsourcing, when broken down, can be considered the biggest business story since the assembly line. In fact, when people ask me "well, what IS crowdsourcing." I usually just tell them: It’s the expansion of the assembly line through the Internet.

But, I digress. Crowdco

How Jeff Howe describes it (and he coined the phrase, so I’ll defer to his definition):

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a
job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee)
and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in
the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

Okay.

So for organizations like iStockPhoto — a clear example of crowdsourcing — it makes perfect sense. Magazine photos were traditionally produced by a select few. Today, that market has opened up and anyone can sell photos to a professional magazine via crowd powered middle-men like iStockPhoto.

So far, so good.

But what needs further refining is the soundbyte — that crowdsourcing is the "application of OS principles to fields outside of software." Jeff is onto something — but in the end, I think it’s better to focus in on exactly what principle it is that crowdsourcing relies on.

The revolutionary aspect of open source is the effect of standing on other people’s shoulders. There is a crowdsourcing element to it all — anyone can add to the code, not just people in-house, but the real power comes from the collection and aggregation of knowledge/work/products over time. Point is: IT’S A COLLABORATION.

I just don’t see this in iStockPhotography, Innocentive, Mechanical Turk or some of the other go-to examples of crowdsourcing. The process of creating a product is opened up. Yes. Communities might even spring up in the process. But are the crowds of people collaborating?

more))

Date: June 22nd, 2007
Cate: Environment/Geography, Journalism Theory/Analysis, My Work, Open Source and Community, Science
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Citizen Science

I’ve been working for Jeff Howe at Crowdsourcing.com, doing basic research stuff for his book which will be finished later this year.

Tonight, I spent a fair amount of time researching bird hobbyists. Specifically, I was looking into the Audobon Society’s Christmas Bird Count and their Great Backyard Bird Count. It’s an example of "citizen science" according to Wikipedia.

I know a several people are annoyed with the term "citizen journalist" and I can understand why. A colleague recently asked if that term bothered me — my reply: If I try teaching a 6-year-old boy how to read, would you call me a "citizen teacher"?

That specific semantic debate aside, I do have a more positive attitude towards "citizen scientist" (since science is traditionally something you need a degree and distinct education to practice).

I’m currently talking to different people who are involved in citizen science — more specifically, I’m talking to people who are interested in using web 2.0 tools to improve the methods that (a. scientists can do research (b. reporters can cover science issues and (c. teachers can relate scientific principles to eager students.

It’s an interesting subject. Science, in my mind, is the next field outside of software that can really profit from the connectivity of the Internet. As the exchange of information increases — the rate at which we can further refine scientific research into minute fields of interest, power that research by the crowd and share the findings through open source practices and principles is still in its infancy. In part because science is big business — but as companies like Innocentive continue to succeed — I expect open source science to emerge the victor over big business.

Although science is connected to big business — it is in the end a noble pursuit that will, I hope, seek the greatest means to achieve its ends. I believe citizen science will play a role — just as open source science (the open sharing of scientific findings) will distribute the power of science in ways we have never imagined.

Some people powered science websites I’m watching latetly.
Scientificblogging.com
Seed Magazine (I used to work there)
InkLing Magazine