Week 5 reading: Stir a revolution at your own desk

As Gilmor mentioned in this week’s reading that blogging is an act of civic engagement and showed us examples of how blogging has given those that are oppressed a voice, I am more and more convinced that blogging thrives in a society that lacks a free press.

When there isn’t freedom of speech and when the press acts as a mouthpiece of the government, people will look for an alternative medium to get the right information. (If not, they are simply too brainwashed and the government’s propaganda has worked.) Hence, blogging provides a relatively safe environment for people to post information and voice their dissentients against the status quo. The web provides a safety net for bloggers with open source softwares such as anonymity proxies software that can be downloaded on the Internet or by emailing counterparts from democratic countries to publish it online for them. Bit by bit, I believe, a community with the same spirit against the oppression will emerge and possibly bring about a revolution.

However, this may be too optimistic on my part. Gilmore mentioned that blogging and democracy belongs to the class of the elites. How can these online voices be heard if most of the population cannot even read or write, much less own a computer? Hence, more help should be rendered to the developing countries to help them advance their technology. Yet one must remember that the West cannot enforce its technological practice onto the developing countries but do what the Romans do.

Also, since the blogosphere belongs to the class of the elites, the content likewise will be tailored to them. No doubt there are diversity in the blogosphere, with blogs on any topic you can think of, from sewing to cupcakes to politics. You name it, you have it.
However, they have variety but no diversity. Variety means that there are many blogs under the domain of politics, but under this umbrella, are there a variety of diverse voices? Are they merely blogs echoing each other’s opinions?

Nevertheless, blogs in a specific domain are getting specialized too. And this is what I am excited about. This means that you can write about anything or find information you are passionate about and form a community. Better still turn it into a profitable business model! Probably I shall do that when I retire. Easy money.

Questions:
1) How do we ensure diversity of content in the blogosphere, given the fact that blogging belongs to the class of the elites?
2) How can blogging help the developing countries?

Ten things journalists should know about surviving in a high-tech industry

As new technology springs up faster than we can blink our eyes these days, it is therefore important for us as journalists to know how to use the new technology to our advantage rather than let it bulldoze over us. Here are 10 tips that will ensure our survival in future

Though it makes sense that the content on the web should be free, but it irks a journalist to have to deal with that.

“Make it free. Traditionally, the news industry has taken stuff that’s free – public information, for example – and made it worth money by adding editorial value. On the web, the most successful companies don’t build, they collapse. They take something that used to cost money and make it free. What costs money in your region that you can make free? Craigslist isn’t the only one that can play that game.”

Thanks Publishing 2.0!

Individual reading: the 11 layers of citizen journalism

Finally, the answer that I have always been looking for is found in The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism, a step-by-step approach in dealing with the changing landscape of journalism by integrating the professional with the amateur. Finally, all my optimism about the future of the industry has not let me down.

The ll layers can be seen like layers on a wedding cake, where the layers ultimately adds up to the ideal and perfect stage.

1) Opening up to public comment is the first baby step to integrating the community with the professionals, giving an interactive and new dimension to the newspaper. News are a whole lot richer with more input from the community that a reporter may have missed or have insufficient resources to find. Comments can be made for virtually everything such as classified ads, weather, obituary.
2) Citizens add-on approach allows citizens to add their personal experiences or information along with the stories to give a side bar full of stories!
3) Open source reporting is inviting the citizens to be part of your reporting process, in terms of research, interview questions, reporting and writing. Of course, credit them to maintain quality (we all have a capitalistic mindset)!
4) Citizen Bloghouse: Invite outstanding and prominent bloggers to blog for your news website so that you can maintain quality of blogs as well as draw online traffic to your website. Of course, this may break the rice bowls of professional columnists.
5) Newsroom citizens transparency blog: Have an online ombudsmen, he will respond faster to you.
6) The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version: let citizens blog with minimal editing, hence the news gathered can be more localized and specific.
7) The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version: give the citizens freedom to blog and let them moderate themselves. Wash your hands off any unnecessary lawsuits just in case!
Add a print edition: Combine the best stories and photos and organize them into different sections like a newspaper and publish them, giving blogs a sense of professionalism and spurring the bloggers to work harder.
9) The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism: Both parties work together to produce content on a news website.
10) Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof: Having both parties work alongside each other to complement the content of the paper.
11) Wiki-journalism: totally no editor-blogger relationship. Horizontal structure where everyone is an editor cum journalist.

However, this may seem like an ideal stage of journalism. But will it work?

Questions:
1) How will this form of citizen journalism work in countries with no free press?
2) How can truth be verified in the citizen journalist’s content?

Week 4 reflections

Shirky portrayed amateurization as the demise of professional journalism, which I agree to some extent as indeed, with cheap publishing tools available online, virtually (no pun intended), anyone can be a journalist or a photographer. However, as much as the society continues to undergo evolution, (sounds Darwinian eh?), newspaper and the professional journalism industry will undergo evolution too. As much as the blogosphere has created a new eco-system, so can the newspaper join in and form a new eco-system of communications. What we see now as a threat might become an opportunity.

When the television and radio came into the picture, news were reported almost immediately as they happened. The newspaper content had to then become a source of analysis and advice for the people on how to deal with the situation. Since now that newspaper is a space-bias medium according to Marshall McLuhan and each event that is happening has to be certified as “newsworthy” by the editorial (professional) gatekeepers before it gets the professional press coverage, other smaller events that are rejected by the gatekeepers can be covered by the bloggers. There is a form of division of labor. The bloggers will cover their own news, and use the Internet as a test bed for the public’s reaction. If there is a lot of public reaction towards the event, the professional press will do more in-depth coverage about the particular event. In this way, resources will be efficiently allocated to the right news.

While the future outlook of journalism may not seem that bleak, I have a concern regarding the ambiguous definition of a journalist in this time and age. If a journalist is someone who publishes and writes something, then any blogger is a journalist, anyone who disseminates information via email is a journalist too. And if they are all subjected to the privileges journalists have, chaos will ensue.

Anyone in the name of an investigative journalist can call any company and request for private data, using the Information Act as an authority. And in the first place, which professional editor has warrant that an investigation be carried out? Who made the company worth an expose? To whom is this “journalist” working for? For the people and their right to know or for his own selfish agenda (supposed he is a rival company spy who happens to be a blogger and made use of the loophole in the definition of a journalist to abuse his privilege?) Hence, there needs to be a professional body that defines what it means to be a journalist. It all boils down to professionalism again. Though Shirky paints a picture that professional journalists are becoming obsolete like the scribes, there is after all, a need for us to keep the freedom and amateurism efficient.

Questions:
1) What is the difference between a professional journalist and a blogger?
2) How will the gatekeeping system of news change in the future with the rise of the blogosphere?

Week 3 Reflections

By the time I graduate from college and step into the journalism industry, I will be skilled in ploughing through weblogs, email lists, forums and Technorati for information and pulling them altogether on my blog, stirring discussions and sharing videos and audios on P2P network. The future of journalism is exciting to me. The tools that the Internet created simply make the business of journalism more engaging and enriching.

I was elated when I realized that I could get first-hand information about a potentially newsworthy topic through subscribing to mailing lists and forums. I am always concerned about the enterprising aspect of journalism. I do not have many contacts or am I close enough to friends within the six-degrees of separation to ask them, “So what’s going on that I can write about?” Not anymore with these forums and mailing lists.

The topic of journalistic authority shifting from professionals to amateurs was something I touched on in my first blog entry. Who is now the fourth estate? It is scary to think that my critics are all out there, but may be shrouded under the Internet’s veil of anonymity.

The medium for writing and communication has evolved over the centuries, from writing on papyrus to writing on the web. Likewise, the form of journalism and its medium have evolved over the years from informing the public via a newspaper to radio waves and now, binary digits. However, many often associate blogs with diaries. Hence, it is somewhat oxymoronic to combine journalism and blogging. Blogging connotes individual perspectives, journalism means objectivity. How can these two resolve their conflict? How can a journalist-cum-blogger maintain his objectivity yet have the freedom to say anything he wants on his blog? A blog loses its unique flavor and readership when it loses its personal touch. This is also the reason why blogging will not take over the newspaper. People read newspaper for the hard news and information, and then go online and take on a fresh perspective of news from the journalist-blogger. It makes news reading more vibrant and holistic. Hence, my take is that newspaper will not perish, but serve alongside with blogging for the enlightenment of mankind.

The reading also touched on Web 2.0 and how businesses use this technology so that many brains can work together and produce a better product. This collaboration can exist in journalism too. Imagine the story is written, edited and designed simultaneously. This Wiki-style journalism saves time and money. It makes journalism more dynamic. Of course, the bane is, you may not like your work being messed around with.

Questions:
1) Since weblogs come from a gift economy, which often results in the free-rider problem, how can it be sustained?
2) How will P2P networks affect journalism practice in terms of copyright and sales of newspaper?

week 2 reflections

A publication designer, a web editor, a photojournalist, a broadcast journalist, a “talk show host”, etc. These are some of the many hats an online journalist has to wear. As I read Stefanac’s steps in setting up a blog, I realized that an online journalist does everything that would have otherwise been diversified in a news organization. Hence, in the future, I foresee two situations that may arise.

Firstly, more and more young journalists would be trained and well-equipped in all fields of journalism to meet the demand of the skills needed for the blogosphere, now a mainstream medium for news. Journalism schools will offer a degree that encompasses film production, journalism, communication research and public relations. The newsroom will be replaced by journalists who can be called to take photos on one day, edit the page layout on another, or shoot a one-minute clip for an news broadcast and later put them altogether onto the web.

And this becomes reflective of the blogosphere too. Online journalists may have their very own “broadcast stations” right at their laptops. It is a one-man show. Yet they are not entirely alone, as the audience is the one providing information through the blogging community, as mentioned in We the Media. Journalism is a conversation, where the audience will become engaged in the reporting process. Hence in the future, the news organization becomes a single-man online production supported by potentially infinite sources and viewers.

And this is already taking place in Singapore. We have an online portal called (STOMP) http://www.stomp.com.sg/about/about.html
set up by the main newspaper, The Straits Times. STOMP allows citizens to post photos, videos of unusual news sightings and provides an alternative source of information for the main paper.

The second scenario is this: Online journalists have become “Jack of all trades, master of none”. Due to the packed course curriculum in journalism schools, most courses only skim the surface. Even in the field, the journalist cannot develop a particular area of expertise as he has to juggle so many jobs. The result is sloppy and lazy reporting.

In light of these two future scenarios, I have two questions:
1) Though Gillmor mentioned that the blogosphere helps to reduce the control of the corporate world (which brings to mind the idea of political economy and big media conglomerate), how can the power of the blogosphere and accessibility to open-source information be maintained if big conglomerates start buying over the blogosphere?
2) The editor is the gatekeeper of news in the traditional news organization. How will this change when the audience becomes the gatekeeper of news, deciding what kind of news they want through engaging in online conversation and providing news tip off?

Week One reading reflections

As a blogger myself, I stand as a testimony to the low barrier to entry posed by the blogosphere: Just create an account and the next thing I know, I am posting pictures, videos and giving my 2-cents worth of comments on politics, school systems, theology, philosophy, best restaurants etc. But who am I to have the authority to do that? I am just an undergraduate student. Yet, I believe almost every blogger can identify with me. In the open atmosphere of blogging, everyone and anyone can say whatever they want. However, this is a double-edged sword. The good is, more information will be provided through accessible means. And the bad is, how do we validate the information?

The answer perhaps lies in the blogosphere’s community. Anyone can comment on the blogger’s content, and anyone can comment on each other’s comments too. This creates a form of censorship in itself. This will then give the government no place to step in to monitor and control the Internet. This is great news for journalists! I can say whatever I want. But maybe just in the USA for now?

Growing up in Singapore where we practice racial tolerance and any offensive remarks against the other races are taboo, I have subconsciously self-censor what I am writing on my blog at times. This stems from an incident where a student was charged in court for his statements against the muslim population on his blog in Singapore. When I become an online journalist, I am sure to be real careful with what I say. It is like walking on thin ice.

But this creates another problem. What if in the future, the journalists no longer fear lawsuits of slander filed against them, but instead the fiery lines of threads that disagree with their comments and works on their blogs? The board of censors may shift to the virtual world. This adds on an immediate stress to the online journalist. Once his work goes up on the net, he is subjected to criticism the next second. Unlike in the past, he can stall his time for 24 hours before the next angry man who reads the newspaper over breakfast calls and screams at him.

Hence, after reading the first chapter, I have two pondering questions:
1) How are journalists going to react to the blogosphere as the new watchdog?
2) With low barrier to entry, anyone can come up with blogs and share information, hence, how do online journalists jostle for attention from the readers? How do we get discovered and remain interesting to readers before they click on the next blog link? What kind of marketing skills must we employ?

First day of class

I am excited to be in this class! Seems really fun, challenging and engaging!

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