Students' impression of Elon University's inaugural iMedia class

by Sean H. Smith

Those interviewed for this article have remained anonymous.

As the 2009-10 school year comes to an end, the time has come to assess the inaugural year of Elon University’s iMedia graduate program.

Students of the master’s program were interviewed and asked to give their assessment of their experiences of the past year as they prepare themselves to graduate and — they hope — enter the workforce in stride.

For the Interactive Media program Elon recruited students from around the country including California, Maryland, and, of course, North Carolina. The students all came from different backgrounds and varying educations and were looking to better their future in these tough economic times with an advanced degree.

A few of the students were asked various questions including what their future goals are, the expectations they had for the program, and about the experiences they had.

The reason for enrolling

As the country is in the middle of what has been deemed “the Great Recession,” there have been numerous reasons that the students had for wanting to enroll in the program.

The majority of students felt that iMedia offered them a way to obtain new skills that would benefit them as they hunt and battle for jobs in this poor job market. One student said, “I was looking to retool my skills in design that are relevant” in today’s multimedia age and workforce.

Many see interactive media as the future of entertainment, business, education, and social change. As people rely more and more on electronic media, it has permeated our lives. It seems that in almost anything we do, multimedia is where we turn to for information and knowledge.

Career goals

Students of the inaugural class realized this and have career goals that they felt would benefit from the education they would receive at Elon. They understood that whatever direction they wanted to take their professional future, interactive media would play an important role.

One student coming from a journalism background said, “I want to be a iMedia director of a major newspaper or news organization,” a field he’s been working in since graduating from college. He has experienced the journalism word as it has been and knew that in order to be successful in the field in the future he must possess interactive media skills that he could not receive in the workplace.

Other career ambitions included working for Pixar as a designer, Web designer at an advertising agency, or work in marketing and brand management, which is being transformed by social media.

What they want to learn and what classes they got the most from

When researching graduate schools many of the students had a set of expectations of the program based on what it had to offer. Most were promised that they would learn a variety of software programs that would be essential in any media-related job. “Elon said it would be an extremely hands-on program in which we would be learning design, coding, and back-end things,” one student mentioned, while another said, “I was hoping to learn a lot about online advertising and learn more technical skills.”

It seems that most students wanted more experience in using software programs such as the various Adobe Flash for Web animations, Adobe’s Illustrator and InDesign used for multimedia design, and Final Cut Pro for video editing.

“the theory classes have helped me think more critically about media.”

However, they also received a lot of education in the field of communication and Internet theory. While some say “the theory classes have helped me think more critically about media,” some felt “theory is all well and good but it won’t help me get a job. I’m not one to sit in the backroom creating theory or stats. I want to create things that help companies and organizations have an online presence and I feel bad because I don’t have all the things I need in order to do that." The practice of creating media is what interests the students the most.

All the students interviewed felt that the classes they have gotten the most out of based on their career goals, was the iMedia production class in which all student learned Adobe Flash, as software that allows users to creative interactive animation such as the ad banners seen on some web pages.

In general most of the students believe they have learned most of the skills they were expecting to but some feel that there was “very little support in learning CSS, Javascript, and HTML” which are essential for being able to create web sites.

“the program [hasn’t been] valuable in the way it was promoted but I did get something out of it I didn’t expect and that was meeting and working with my classmates"

Fortunately, the environment of graduate schools offer students a source of education outside of the classroom. One student said with immense sincerity, “the program [hasn’t been] valuable in the way it was promoted but I did get something out of it I didn’t expect and that was meeting and working with my classmates. Getting their opinions about my work has been more beneficial than anything else. It’s amazing to enjoy a program because of the people (classmates).” Another pointed out that, “I’ve learned most of the skills I wanted to but not necessarily through the program structure. A lot of what I’m learning is from online sources or my classmates.”

Of course this is something that Elon was probably very aware and expected most the learning to occur outside of the class and between fellow students. Graduate school is different than undergraduate school in that the students tend to take more responsibility on themselves to learn what they want to learn. Yet, when spending nearing $29,000 on tuition, there are still expectations of the classes, professors, and school as a whole.

Some feel that the inaugural class was more of an experiment than anything else. One student has the suspicion that “the school was still trying to define the program as the year went on.” Case in point was the last-minute addition of a second semester elective that was not openly advertised to all students as an option for them.

When asked if they felt they learned all the skills that they would consider essential to their future career ambitions, the responses were mixed. Upon being asked this question, a student with interest in journalism said, “I think so. I’ve learned what I need to get the job I want.”

On the other hand, some felt differently. “We got tons of experience in some things but not all,” said another student. “I don’t feel I’m marketable because I haven’t learned the skills that others will have” is the concern of a student wanting to get into marketing and brand management.

Suggestions for the future

Despite the concerns that some students have, they all understand that it’s almost impossible to please everyone when they come from different backgrounds. As a result they were all willing to offer suggestions for improving the program for future classes.

Some suggested that Elon teach theory only during one semester and leave the other for classes that taught practical applications such as the interactive media production class that taught them Flash. One maintained, “It’s hard to focus on theory classes when needing to learn programs to get our portfolios done so we can get jobs.”

A couple of other students suggested allowing students more options and guide their education in the direction of their choosing by “making some of the required classes electives and let students find their own path.”

As the interviews reached the end, the students were asked their overall impression of the first year of the iMedia program.

“I’m glad I came back to Elon for [iMedia],” one student said. Regardless whether the students learned all they wanted to learn, they do seem to enjoy their time at Elon and the close ties its community offers. The bonds that the students have formed with each other appear to be what’s most important to all. They have all been in this together and relied on each other, which has led to a new degree and new future.

Why do citizen 'journalists' get a bad rep?

by Jaqueta Abbey

What kind of citizen “journalism” blog would we be if we didn’t give voice to the other side of the citizen contribution argument? Read on to see some of the criticisms people have about contributions from citizens.

Citizens are not trained journalists

Many people have a problem with the fact that citizen journalists are called such when they have not been trained in a journalism school nor have any professional journalism experience.

With the term “journalist”, people make certain assumptions. Because someone is a “journalist”, he/she is all knowing and can validate any story with facts and primary sources. We know that they have taken themselves out of the story and written it objectively. We intuitively know that what they are telling us the truth because it is their duty to report the truth. Regular citizens usually don’t have access to this kind of information unless the situation involves them.

John C. Dorvak is a PCMag.com columnist who is the former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. He has also contributed to various periodicals such as Forbes and the New York Times. In a 2006 article called “The Folly of Citizen Journalism”, he had this to say:

“Citizen journalism, to me, is like citizen professional baseball—it's just not practical. You can't play professional baseball just because you think the Seattle Mariners stink. You're not a good enough ballplayer. Yes, bloggers have been breaking news stories here and there, but it's usually because they amplify something that media professionals have already written about but that was ignored by the major media.”

You can read the full article here.

Credibility

How do we know if a citizen journalist is telling the truth? Part of the reason, citizens lack credibility is simply because they do not know or do not care to take the proper steps to double-check and triple-check their information.

I’m sure that a few actually do, but for the most part if not’s someone’s job on the line, or they are in a hurry to post something, they are not going to take the time necessary to make sure their information is verified. Also, I bet that due to the fact that these people are just citizens and not professional reporters, the people who could verify their facts probably won’t give them the time of day.

Citizens thought to be activists/subjective

There are those out there who have the belief that citizen journalists must have some kind of agenda. Why else would ordinary citizens be interested in creating news? It is true that there are people out there, using so-called citizen journalism blogs and websites to push their agenda, but that does not mean that everyone claiming to be a citizen journalist is doing so.

We all know it is hard to remain objective about an issue, and professional journalists are trained to put their opinions to the side to give an objective view of a story. Citizen journalists may not even think about this being an issue they need to address, or they might have thought they were presenting all sides to the story when actually they were not.

So can anything be done to boost the reputation of citizen journalism?

If part of the criticism is that citizen contributors are called journalists, what are alternatives to the title “citizen journalist”? As of late, people have been using terms such as “grassroots media”, “people’s media” and “participatory media”.

Also, why not train those interested in doing some reporting? One option is to set up journalism boot camps. The Society of Professional Journalists has actually implemented the Citizen Journalism Academy with the mission of helping “everyone wanting to practice journalism to do so accurately, ethically, and fairly.” These workshops feature segments such as Be Responsible: Exploring Ethics and Decision Making, Get to the Point: Reporting and Writing Basics, and Staying Out of Trouble: A Media Law Primer.

To learn more about the Citizen Journalism Academy, visit the website.

Perhaps with professional journalists teaching newcomers some of the expected standards, eventually people will be more inclined to accept citizen-reported news as an addition to professional news.

SXSW roundup

by Steve Earley

No, I did not go to South by Southwest Interactive. Grad school made that logistically and financially difficult. Maybe next year. Next best thing, I read about the March 12-16 conference online. I even watched some videos about it, in fact. Add some food from a cart and it's almost like I was there. Here's a roundup of SXSW items I found instructive for those studying and practicing citizen and participatory news.

The power of groups: Testify!

Clay Shirky's still gung-ho about groups. His SXSW address centered on civic sharing, or "taking what the whole group knows tacitly and turning it into a public document." The social technology theorist said governments serve groups, not individuals, and advocated motivating people to share in order to grow the amount of collective information and leverage the power of groups.

An example of civic sharing Shirky, um, shared, is Ushahidi, the Kenyan-developed map wiki in the news recently for its life-saving role following the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes. Ushahidi — Swahili for testimony — aggregates mobile messages and plots them in virtual real time on an interactive online map.

The open source tool was created to track violence in the wake of Kenya's disputed 2007 election and has since been used to track unrest and medicine stockouts elsewhere in Africa and to monitor elections in India, Mexico, Lebanon and Afghanistan, among other uses.

Ushahidi could revolutionize humanitarian and military efforts. The world saw what it can do after a natural disaster. A New York Times piece last week hypothesized about using Ushahidi to find Osama bin Laden.

Ushahidi's journalistic applications are innumerable. (Citizen journalists invented the tool, in fact.) The Washington Post, for one, used it to map snow-removal. It's easy to see how it could be used to cover crime, the environment, large festivals like SXSW and a host of other topics.

Breaking: Wikipedia
great spot news source

Journalists are hesitant to use Wikipedia as a breaking news source because it can be edited by anyone. They can't trust that what's posted there is accurate, they say. The WikiMedia Foundation's Moka Pantages (pictured right) told a SXSW audience that news professionals are thinking about it all wrong.

Because its content can be edited by everyone, and is edited by hundreds to thousands of individuals, Pantages argued, Wikipedia is a more trustworthy starting point for breaking news information than traditional reports, which are typically reviewed by only a handful of editors.

When Wikipedia is compared with traditional sources, she added, the online encyclopedia faces a double standard.

"Traditional media get bits of breaking news wrong all the time, but we accept that as part of the game," she said, according to ReadWriteWeb. "To vilify Wikipedia for the same errors sets unequal standards and besides, you'll likely never see the same level of transparency in traditional media about where it went wrong."

A Seed is planted. What will grow?

This year's festival was supposed to be a big coming out party for AOL's three-month-old Seed, a beta site that turns anyone with a Web connection into a potential contributor to the company's 80-some sites.

Seed, numerous press accounts reported, was to get interviews with all 2,000 bands playing at SXSW's music portion, providing contributors with suggested questions and paying them $50 a pop. (As MediaBistro put it: "Not a great rate for full-time freelancers" but "workable" for amateurs "looking to have fun while amassing some clips.")

As the music festival winded down, Saul Hansell, the former New York Times reporter running Seed, told Business Insider that AOL had published interviews with 80 percent of "the bands that are still playing." Hansell characterized the experiment as a success, saying he had been "a little sloppy" in how he talked about the project and never expected to run interviews from all 2,000 bands.

Whatever the final tally ends up being, it's nothing any newsroom could muster with staff or traditional freelancers. On quantity, I'll give AOL a passing grade. But what about quality?

The interviews I browsed clearly had gone through at least some editing and most were entertaining. But on balance they kinda left me thinking "You get what you pay for." A lot of interviews lacked a clear news peg or hook. There were also style mistakes (not hyphenating hip-hop) and uninspired writing (using the word "unique" twice in the same sentence).

What concerned me most was the verbatim Q&A format most of the pieces employed. Even with recorders, quoting people word-for-word is difficult for full-time journalists. What degree of precision can Seed reasonably expect from its stringers?

The issues discussed above lessened my experience. But, I'm a former copy editor. How much are average music fans really going to care about or even notice these things? They're just going to be happy to see fresh, reasonably well-written profiles on so many of the artists from one of the nation's premier music festivals. As long as "army-ant journalism," as some detractors label projects like Seed, doesn't price out serious writing and reporting, it's a tune I can listen to.

A blog blurb about context (irony noted)

The news never sleeps. It never has. But now the organizations who cover it barely do either. In an insatiable "What's-happening-now" news ecosystem, context, it might be said, is an endangered species.

Nurturing contextual narratives on an increasingly episodic Web was the subject of SXSW's "Future of Context" panel.

"Faced with a flood of headlines on an ever-increasingly variety of topics, we shut off," panel organizer Matt Thompson said in remarks prepared for delivery. "We turn to the news that doesn't require much understanding — crime, traffic, weather — or we turn off the news altogether."

Using the health care debate as an example, Thompson said taking "maybe 10 minutes" to fill in the explanatory details usually left out of reports would make the issue "a lot easier to understand."

On his blog, panelist Jay Rosen (pictured left) compared the situation to a computer receiving continuous updates for software that was never installed.

Among the solutions offered on the panel's Web site is an idea that's come up before: Replacing the article or story as the building block of news. News consumers, the site suggests, should be able to follow topics like they follow Twitter users. Topic streams would summarize any updates since the user last checked in and include a "Wikipedia-like entry" summarizing the entire topic.

A more technical prescription is to develop a uniform context transfer protocol. The way I understand it, this basically means providing a standardized way for content to talk to other content on the Web, in turn revealing relationships.

Those are just two possibilities. There are plenty more to read about and comment on on the panel's site.

Think they've pre-written the obit?

Journalists are notoriously morbid. So, I suppose being on a panel forecasting the death of your own newspaper is all in a day's work.
That's exactly how New York Times business columnist David Carr spent his day Saturday when he joined mostly new media representatives in the session "Media Armageddon: What Happens When the New York Times Dies."

The discussion itself, which also included Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, Amy Langfield of NewYorkology.com, Greg Beato of Reason Magazine and moderator Henry Copeland of BlogAds, adopted a tone of if not when, according to online accounts, but by no means sugarcoated the Times' and other legacy outlets' predicament.

Most of the audience indicated it would miss the Times, but few indicated they'd pay for its online content.

There was plenty of talk about advertising revenue, reporting staffs, social media presences and other more or less tangible things. These things can help news organizations be successful but they are not unequivocally perquisites for their success. What old and new media organizations alike non-negotiability require is something wholly intangible: credibility. If audiences don't think a news organization is credible, it won't be a news organization for long.

Both Carr and Moulitsas, whose old-versus-new-media back-and-forth dominated the session, according to coverage, made thoughtful arguments challenging the credibility of the other's medium.

Carr, who characterized his role on the panel as "MSM piñata," allowed that the blogosphere's crowdsourced approach has helped surface under-covered stories but said the motivations behind this work can be difficult to assess.

"The problem with assembling bits from everywhere, you don't know what it's attached to and what interests are driving it," Carr (pictured right) said, according to a blog post by Research Triangle social media manager David B. Thomas. "One of the advantages of having a tent pole or several tent poles, you do know where they stand."

Moulitsas too offered qualified praise for his counterpart. He acknowledged that bloggers need the traditional media, especially the Times, which he said he uses as a barometer for which stories are important. But the blogger turned legacy media's institutional strength on its head, suggesting it creates a competitive disadvantage by promoting lazy journalism.

"Citizen journalists don't have that built in credibility so they have to prove themselves every day, do good sourcing, and link to the source materials," Moulitsas said, also according to Thomas's post. "Judith Miller was able to just say that her sources told her Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

A final quote from Moulitsas addresses a crucial caveat, for both old and new media, raised in a question from an audience member: That audiences must possess enough media literacy to judge a news source's credibility.

"Previously, only certain people had the opportunity to try to convince the gullible," he said, "now everyone does."

Top 10 Tips for Video Production

by Brynne Tuggle

In Citizen and Participatory News, one of the biggest problems is the quality of the work from people who have not had training with equipment or gone through school to learn about video composition and editing. But this doesn’t have to be this way! I believe Citizen Participation is an important part of the journalism process, and the legacy media world should embrace it. But it can be said that news organizations are not readily embracing this phenomenon because of the quality of the work. Well, we can change that. I’ve outlined 10 easy tips for video production that anyone can adopt. This will help anyone who’s interested in producing professional quality video projects for the purpose of participating in a news organization.

1. Steady, well-composed: This means, you want to stay away from shaky video, this is very easy to do, even if you’re using a hand-held camera like a flip cam, just try to stay as still as possible, and compose your shot well, meaning, look at what’s around the object or objects that you’re shooting and consider how best to highlight your subject/s.

2. Physically close: This tip helps with keeping the camera steady, and not shaky. If you’re closer to your subject, it’s easier to keep the camera steady.

3. Utilize three channels: Video and two channels of audio, two types of audio, primary sound, secondary sound: you always want to include two channels of audio to go along with your video, so you have a lot of stuff when you get to the editing process, so the primary sound refers to the main sound, the interviewee, and the secondary sound refers to what’s called “natural sound”, the sound that you hear naturally in the background, like birds chirping, or people talking at a baseball game, etc.

4. Shot sequencing: This shows that shots go together logically, and there is a good mix of shots varying from medium shot to tight shots, to extreme close ups, your video should tell its own story without narration or anything, it should tell a story by itself.

5. Seek subjective sound: The most compelling stuff is usually people’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and emotion

6. Single-camera lighting: For this, you want to focus on setting up the light in every instance where a person is speaking on camera, so that you bring out the features and the person pops off the screen. Unlit interviews are one of the biggest hallmarks of amateurism in video production.

7. Interview set-up: Framing the interview: this is an important part of the process, setting up the interview correctly will help you greatly later during the editing process, so important things to remember: shoot the interview subject from the top of the sternum, with a sliver of space above the head, shoulder width, and have him/her look slightly off camera, also remember to have decent background (darker than the skin color of the person you’re shooting.

8. SWAP: This refers to synchronized words and pictures, the action in the video should match up to the words of the narration, if you’re talking about birds flying, you need to see birds flying.

9. Non-video elements: Photos, graphics, and motion graphics, use these things to enhance your story, and when you don’t have compelling video, or when these items will tell the story more effectively.

10. Edit pace: Every kind of story has a “different” edit pace, depending on whether it is a news piece, a feature, or a documentary, they all have different feels:

• Natural pause
• Time it takes for the action to occur
• The beat of the music

Reuters gives journalists social media etiquette

by Cathy Freeman

Social media has done more for us than help us stalk our favorite celebrities. It is transforming the newsroom; from the way we find sources to the way we distribute stories. The news is benefitting from this broadened scope of real-time information, but it isn’t without its detractors.

In order to provide a much-needed sense of structure in the chaotic world of tweeting and friending, it’s imperative for organizations to develop specific social media policies that clearly enforce guidelines and expectations.

Queue Reuters, which released its controversial social media guidelines this week as a part of its revered journalism handbook. These principles are a good reminder for traditional and citizen journalists alike.

Reuters' Recommendations

Think before you post

Create a criteria checklist that adds validity to your content. Reuters' example: would you want your post on the front page of the paper associated with your name? This pre-post ritual will ensure that you aren’t archiving emotional outbursts in the digital perma-cloud.

Avoid raising questions about your freedom from bias

Every Facebook group, page link and Google image can be tied to your name or your organization’s brand. Eliminate suspicions of bias before they even start – don’t link.

Be transparent

This is a pretty standard expectation, especially for a news organization. Be clear about your intentions on any personal blog or social networking profile and post everything under your real name. Always notify your audience if and when someone else is posting under your name.

If you use social networks for both professional and private activity then use separate accounts

In the policy’s intro, it warns against the blurring of professional and personal content and suggests Reuters’ employees keep all accounts appropriate. It cautions, “anything you post on a social media site may be made public,” despite the use of privacy settings.

Seek the permission of your manager before setting up a professional presence on a social networking site

Know who is speaking on behalf of your brand and what they’re saying. Also know that if you are friending or following sources you might be losing your competitive edge.

Twitter

In Reuters’ case, it warns against “scooping the wire” by breaking stories via Twitter. All in all, this policy might have significant implications for the future of the news’ perspective on social media.

5 image editing tips for beginners

by Jaqueta Abbey

In this video, learn five tips to use in your future image editing endeavours:

1. Red-eye tool

2. Photo filters

3. Crop tool

4. Changing image size and resolution

5. Saving for the Web

Need an image editing program? The free programs I mention in the video are GIMP, Picasa, and HeliosPaint. For other programs, just google "free image editing software".

Happy editing!

10 blogs about visual journalism

by Marc DeRoberts

These are some of the blogs that I go to when I'm looking for inspiration or simply to learn a new trick.

1. Professor Kobre's guide to videojournalism: This is one of my new favorite blogs. There are so many valuable resources and tips here. Warning: this will gobble up a lot of your time as I spent hours flipping through articles one recent Friday night.

2. MediaStorm: A lot of my peers and classmates have been geeking out on the material MediaStorm has been publishing online over the last few years. They have a great blog chock-full of tips, and even discuss their work-flow. Eric Maierson, a producer at MediaStorm posts regularly and points out some bonus resources on MediaStorm's Twitter feed.

3. Adam Westbrook: Adam is a UK journalist and new media guru. His posts reflect from his experiences and experiments and are very encouraging for someone armed with interest. Adam teaches in classrooms and to the masses via the Internet. He also has a couple of e-books that I've found to be very beneficial. A must read for the journalist on a budget.

4. Verve Photo: The New Breed of Documentary Photographers: I love good photography and can spend hours on end gawking at amazing pictures. I've seen me do it. This blog usually is a catalyst for such an occurrence. It's addicting because Geoffrey Hiller, the man behind the blog, posts every few days. The resources are infinite and the content is constantly growing.

5. Mark Hancock: Photojournalism: Mark is a photojournalist in Texas. He's an accredited pj, most recently having worked with The Dallas Morning News. His posts typically reflect new assignments, but he has a huge section that contains a lengthy list of articles he wrote to help you improve your photojournalism.

6. Solo Video Journalist: Posts including how-to tips, gear review, and cool links worth checking out.

7. MultimediaShooter: This is another blog that will peel time off the clock. There are many great resources, examples, and inspirational tips to further the field of multimedia storytelling.

8. Cyndy Green: VideoJournalism: Tips on techniques and starting on a tight budget.

9. Robb Montgomery: Multimedia Training and Visual Journalism: Robb is the CEO of Visual Editors. His blog not only covers what its title implies, it also offers tips for consulting about new media with organizations.

10. 4Docs: Don't just explore the blog...absorb the whole site. 4Docs is geared towards short documentary films and encourages people entering the industry to watch some of the ones on their site before starting their own projects. There is also a list of resources to help with funding and logistics.

Swap you 3 briefs for 1 Web video? Deal!

My proposal for regional
online news trading posts

by Steve Earley

To the list of wide-eyed ideas about how to save journalism, you can add this one:

The problems

The industry is moving toward charging for at least some online content. It seems now to be more of a question of when than a question of if. But, whether outlets go with a freemium, metered or subscription approach, what should they charge? Users, initially, aren't going to be happy with any price, in part because they've been spoiled by free online content for so long, but also in part because news organizations are making the price up.

This goes back to the news industry's fundamental problem. News is valuable. Democracy would not function without it. Very few would deny that. But, because the industry's business model never charged customers directly for content, just how valuable has never been determined.

This and the assumption that customers won't pay for news has steered some toward the nonprofit model, which, already producing great journalism in places like San Diego and the Twin Cities, will be a part of the solution. I'd argue, however, that people will pay for news. After Napster, alleged experts said people wouldn't pay for music anymore. Then iTunes came along. News is every bit as valuable as music. If the industry can't find a market for it, it's not trying hard enough.

Actually, it doesn't have to try too hard. It doesn't have to look any further than iTunes, in fact. Why not make an iTunes for news? My idea is a little bit more complicated than that — it would be regional, not international, and publishers could name their own price — but essentially that's what I'm proposing.

In addition to establishing a market price for news, my idea, what I'm calling regional news trading posts, addresses the following issues:

• News spreads like wildfire online, often without any kind of mechanism to credit let alone compensate the original source.
• News organizations are sitting on reams of potentially useful information they have no incentive to publish.
• Citizen journalists can potentially help professional news gatherers, but the professionals don't trust them.
• It's difficult to demand, or even expect, too much from volunteers, which most citizen journalists are.
• Wire services are too expensive and not local enough.
• While news organizations whine about the difficulty of monetizing online content, they've barely scratched the surface when it comes to the microtargeting of ads.
  

My idea also challenges the inter-organization rivalries that have come to dictate so much of outlets' decision making. Yes, cross-town outlets should still try to one-up each other's coverage. The fear that the other guy might have it and you won't promotes more aggressive reporting, and, as a result, better journalism.

But, what about when you know everyone's going to have it, and, it's, let's face it, not that great a story? Is the opportunity cost of five news organizations sending five reporters to get the same canned quotes and staged photos from a police dog-and-pony show hyping a mid-level drug bust really serving the audience? How about four of those news organizations have the fifth cover the cops' theatrics while their reporters are off at the unemployment office, prisons and mental health parity bill hearings probing the root cause of their community's drug problem?

Or what about when you know you absolutely won't have it, but your audience expects you to have it, regardless of whether you or someone else reported it?

There are times when it makes sense for competitors to be each other's customers. This not only better serves the audience but also opens up a completely new revenue stream for news organizations.

The solution

I am proposing for-profit regional (probably no larger than a Nielsen market) online trading posts where institutional journalists, freelancers, citizen journalists, quasi-journalistic nonprofits and consumers trade news content like completed articles and videos and news gathering products and services like databases, source lists, reporting, editing and aggregation. Producers could charge whatever they wanted for their products or services or elect to trade them for products or services offered by another market participant. Membership would be free, with a valid credit card number.

In a way, my idea hearkens back to modern society's early coffee houses, where patrons would, essentially, barter for information.

For example, a news organization that can't afford to send a reporter to every school board meeting could enlist a blogger to serve as a stringer. The news organization could pay the blogger for his work or compensate him with something that he wants but can't produce on his own, like video interviews with all the school board candidates.

A public feedback system would provide a means of evaluating traders' credibility. And, everything uploaded to the trading post would be embedded with metadata identifying the original author, who else acquired rights to the product or service and how they're using it.

News consumers could likewise acquire completed or raw news products à la carte, likewise either paying for them with money — purchases being automatically deducted from the credit card they registered with — or with some kind of service, tagging user-submitted content, perhaps.

The trading post itself would earn revenue by charging a modest commission — 3 percent or less — on sales made on the network and by taking a cut of the ad revenue traded content generates. The market would also sell ads within the trading interface, which would include original content like industry trends and tips and customized recommendations for members based on their past behavior. All ads would be similarly micro-targeted based on users' browsing and trading habits.

The market would also share subscription revenue with producers it assigns to cable TV-like tiers, some of which would be marketed to news producers, others to consumers. Premium features for news producers — such as advanced analytics software, fully customizable storefronts, vanity storefront urls and customized trends reports — would provide additional monetization opportunities.

It is important to stress that the trading post would not be a walled garden. It would merely be a mechanism to bring buyers and sellers together and to track and monetize content as it roams the open Web.

BBC SuperPower calls for citizen journalists

by Cathy Freeman

There is only one tool in the world with the capacity to completely change lives from Nigeria to Niagara Falls. In a short amount of time, the Internet has exercised tremendous influence over our personal histories, global newscasts, IQs and future opportunities. What more can we expect from such a super-tool? How have 20 years of the web shaped us and where will it take us in the years ahead?

This week, BBC News launched a two-week SuperPower season exploring the answers to these questions and much more. Radio, television and online programs are dedicated to an in-depth look at our digital diets.

The SuperPower Web site features an interactive world map tracing web growth, future projections from Internet innovators, multilingual interactive discussions, blogger highlights, expert takes on the “virtual revolution,” and moving stories from people forever changed by something as simple as “logging on.”

In honor of the Internet’s ability to voice every storyteller's anthem, BBC is even inviting anyone with a camera to become a journalist. In a segment known as “My World,” visitors can submit two-minute videos in hopes of being broadcast by BBC News. The site offers filming tips, as well as pointers on how to make a great documentary.

Once upon a time, hand-held video recorders were most likely seen in the hands of enthusiastic moms on Christmas morning. They documented birthdays and first steps and then promptly took their place collecting dust on the living room shelf. Thankfully, a lot has changed in the last 20 years.

10 tips for citizen participation: Get involved!

1. Recruit people with a mission: look for the types of people to work with who know what they want and are willing to go after it.

2. Use information that is uniquely valuable: look for the information that you as a citizen participator can contribute that has the "unique" factor which makes it more valuable.

3. Remember who your audience is: remember the people who you're targeting with this story and make it pertain to their interests.

4. Be aware of the tools available to you: think about all the ways you can get your story out to the public, whether it's through a blog, social media tools, etc.

5. Don't be afraid to ask the tough questions: just because you're not a traditional journalist doesn't mean you can provide important information, which sometimes requires digging deep to get the information you're looking for.

6. Conduct yourself in a professional manner: always be up front about being a reporter and be courteous.

7. Be thorough!: reporting starts with fact checking, double-check everything! Gather all the information you can about a story and always look for both sides.

8. Be objective and fair: writing a story is not about your own opinions or views about a story. Be sure to present both sides, especially if the story is issue-based or controversial. Remember, it's what the people in your story have to say.

9. Use social media to "spread the gospel" about your story: you don't have to rely on traditional marketing tools. Promote your story through Facebook and Twitter, just get the word out, and your audience will follow.

10. Find a community of storytellers to share ideas and suggestions with: get plugged in, whether it's through a group on Facebook or some other social networking site, and encourage each other and promote each other's work.

Amnesty International at Elon University

by Marc DeRoberts

Amnesty International is a global organization that has been campaigning for human rights since 1961. They have maintained a presence at Elon for the last three years, focusing on issues ranging from the death penalty to censorship.

Aligning with the organization's goals, members strive to educate students and members of the community through stations at Mosely Center, and encourage participation via campus wide events such as photo exhibits and candle-light vigils.

The Elon chapter meets every Wednesday at 8 pm in Belk 206.

Will Citizen Journalism save the news and the planet?

by Sean H. Smith

In recent years there seems to be less news and information about the environment and conservation being delivered to audiences through traditional news media such as television and newspapers.

This is a topic that is or should be in the hearts and minds of the majority of citizens living on this planet. Many people are getting information about our planet, how it is being harmed, and what we as its inhabitants can do to help but it doesn’t seem to be coming from these traditional sources.

An interview with The Virginian-Pilot Online Producer Olivia Hubert-Allen might shed light onto why the topics of planet and environmental conservation are not being reported by legacy media, especially on a regional level. When asked if The Virginian-Pilot had a section in its paper or a department within its organization that covers stories of science and the environment, she said that it doesn’t "have a specific team that is tasked with covering news about the planet” and its environment.

Scott Harper, a member of The Virginian-Pilot’s enterprise team, would be considered the paper's environmental reporter. However, the enterprise team, as Hubert-Allen explained, “tends to do more in-depth, investigative kind of reporting,” which is not typically front-page news.

The majority of regional papers don’t have specific departments that cover environmental issues and stories and Hubert-Allen offers some reasons, based on her own experience working for The Virginian-Pilot.

Hubert-Allen posits that “locally there wouldn’t be enough content to warrant a whole team” nor the “interest from readers”. It’s hard not to question why these beliefs exist within regional news organizations.

The topic of the environment affects people on not just a global level but on a local level as well. Pollution exists in larger industrial cities, which should be a local concern of citizens within those cities. Even smaller towns around the country have environmental issues such as the contamination of local water supplies that affect the public health.

"most of the [environmental] stories we run involve some sort of negative health risk or they impact the economy"

The public concern is exactly what is at the heart of environmental issues as Hubert-Allen suggests, that the environmental stories that do run “tend to do pretty well because most of the stories we run involve some sort of negative health risk” as a result of pollution “or they impact the economy” as in environmental restrictions that are placed on businesses inhibiting their ability to conduct business as they once did. In addition, it seems that it takes a tragedy or human death for news about conservation to come to the mainstream media as was the case with the death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau, when she was grabbed and drown by the Killer Whale, Tilikum.



As the online producer for a local newspaper’s website, Hubert-Allen is at the forefront of modern news that is helping to cover stories relating to traditional back-page topics such the environment and bring them to the forefront. Her role is to give a voice to the local community that reads. Like a growing number of traditional media outlets, The Pilot has begun to devote a section of its online publication to citizen journalism.

News sources like The Pilot, The Washington Post, and CNN that have an online presence allow their audiences to report on stories that interest them and most likely will interest other readers or viewers since they reside in the same community and most likely have the same concerns as the citizen reporter.

The Virginian-Pilot’s HamptonRoads.com section, which covers the goings-on of the local community, invites readers to offer their own news stories for publication and even offers to help in the writing or critiquing of a story. This is becoming a common thread among news organizations as more include links to articles written by citizens.

This increase of citizen participation in news coverage can be a good thing, yet Hubert-Allen does express a fear as most news organizations may regarding citizen journalism: That “people who don’t know what they’re talking about could help to make the conversation murkier." This is a valid point in the early stages of citizen journalism in that it is hard to establish and distinguish credibility of citizen reporters.

One way that credibility can be established or incorrect information can be avoided in stories is dependent on the community the news source serves. Fellow citizen reporters or readers of citizen stories can post comments or corrections to the story. This is the advantage of online citizen journalism. People can offer immediate corrections or additional information, which adds to a story and helps to establish credibility.

Another concern of Hubert-Allen's is that some people might have an alternative agenda when reporting on certain topics. She says, “we have a lot of people in this area who are convinced global warming is a hoax” and want to squash the climate control discussion as climate control would deter their ability to live their lifestyle or affect the company they own which may contribute to pollution.

It is a valid concern that people have little credibility or may have alternative agendas, but, at least these topics are being discussed and ideas are being exchanged freely, which is the point and advantage of citizen journalism.

Hubert-Allen also proposes the idea that citizen news stories could benefit from expert analysis either in the form of an environmental beat reporter at a newspaper or the simple act of experts acting as fellow readers commenting on or correcting stories.

This is why it is so important that more people get involved or at least become aware of citizen journalism and the power it possesses. When experts and the public alike participate it will only improve journalism and help to get issues such as the environment and conservation back onto the front page.

So, next time you visit an online newspaper, be sure to look for the citizen journalism link in the menu and check out what your neighbors are writing about and maybe even add your own story.

Overview of Wikinews.org

by Jaqueta Abbey

Screenshot of Wikinews Homepage

Background

Wikinews is one of the many sister projects of Wikipedia, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. With the slogan of "The free news source you can write!", the goal of the site is to create a global community that can report on a variety of current news events in a reliable and unbiased manner. All Wikinews content falls under a free license so that articles are available for redistribution. On the English Wikinews page alone, there are over 16,000 articles.

In November 2004, Wikinews was nothing more than a demonstration wiki to show how a collaborative news site could work. In December of that same year, the site moved into the beta stage.

As well as text articles, Wikinews has other media projects such as Audio Wikinews, which has podcasts and audio files. Two other projects include Wikinews Video 2.0 and a Wikinews Print Edition.

Features

The latest news is featured on the right side of the front page; you can even subscribe for the latest headlines through RSS feeds. Right below, you can a section containing the most popular Wikinews articles of the moment.

As for the rest of the article database, you can sort articles by geographical location as well as categories, including but not limited to: crime and law, disasters and accidents, obituaries, and "wackynews".

Also, WIkinews has an article writing guide to help send amateur reporters on their way. The guide asks budding reporters to first look at Wikinews guidelines and check to see if the story is appropriate for publication. The guide then offers five essential steps: meet content guidelines, write in "news style", list your sources, add categories, and request a peer review.

Wikinews even has a writing contest open to any and everyone (though experienced contributors will receive a handicap)! The contest started on January 25, 2010 (so you have some catching up to do) and will end on April 18, 2010. Participants can author the following and be scored: a synthesis article, original reporting articles, and photoessays. The prizes are limited, but it's all about the work and sense of pride.

Problems and criticisms

One criticism of Wikinews is that it hasn't been able to separate its identity from sister site Wikipedia as it also covers news events in real time. On the other hand, there are differences between the two projects. One difference is that articles on Wikinews are written in "news style" and Wikipedia articles are written as encyclopedic entries. Another thing that sets Wikinews apart from Wikipedia is that Wikinews reporters have held interviews with many notables, including Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Shimon Peres in 2007.

Two other criticisms of Wikinews are those that attach themselves to every citizen reporter: issues of credibility and bias. With so many contributions, it is hard to parcel out the credibility of not only the article but its authors.

Have something to contribute? Head on over to Wikinews.org and enter the writing contest before April 18th!

Sit back, relax, enjoy the news

How active users let others be more passive

by Steve Earley

Forget for a second everything you've been told about the participatory news consumer. All that talk about the Web empowering people to lean forward. Minimize that window. And open this one: The Web's also enabling people to lean back.

Not the most obvious conclusion to draw from a report subheadlined "How internet and cell phone users have turned news into a social experience." I'll explain. And I'll explain how it might make news organizations' jobs easier. (The report also, by the way, announced that the Web has overtaken newspapers as Americans' No. 3 news source.)

Like countless Web research reports before it, Pew Internet's "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," released Monday, reflects the power law distribution math popularized by authors Chris Anderson and Clay Shirky. Simply put, a subgroup of news consumers is doing most of the participatory heavy lifting spreading, curating and creating content. Yet, many more are benefiting from the "serendipitous discovery" of news these behaviors make possible.

For instance, three-quarters of online news consumers report receiving news links from peers through e-mail or social networks, according to the report, while about half take credit for forwarding them.

Considering Web users at large, "participators," as Pew dubs netizens who create, pass along or transform content, form an even smaller minority. Thirty percent of Web users in Pew's landline and mobile telephone survey say they're accessing news-related content on social networks, while a little more than half that proportion say they're creating content. A quarter of users had commented on stories or blogs, 11 percent had tagged content and 9 percent had created their own article or multimedia piece.

Being steered to information by others is part of the "foraging and opportunism" by which the report says modern audiences access their news. Indeed, an even 50 percent of Americans say they rely on others not just for interesting information but for news they "need to know." Users also unwittingly steer themselves to news. Some 80 percent of online news consumers say they regularly stumble upon news while completing other online activities.

It's never been easier for news just to fall into people's laps. Sure, offline a friend might photocopy you a magazine piece or you might glimpse an interesting article in a newspaper a stranger left behind, but these instances are rarer, and considerably more delayed than online interactions. It used to be, if you wanted news, you had to go get it. The Web lets us go get it like never before, and that's generally what people pay attention to, but it also enables those who want to to sit back and let it come to them.

In this environment, it would seem wise, then, for news outlets to take Malcom Gladwell's advice and go about trying to influence the influencers. Knowing they can no longer be everything to everyone, this clarifies their mission. Even if influencers' influence is less than anticipated, college-educated, in their mid-30s and earning earning $50,000 or more, as Pew's survey describes them, by themselves they're a smart market to pursue.

So, what do the participators want? According to Pew, they want more stories about science and technology, health and medicine, and state government and they want those stories presented interactively. Smart wish list. Science and technology are taking over our lives whether we pay attention or not. Health is slated to be one of this half-century's biggest stories as the baby boomers age. And state government coverage needs rebuilding after legacy media cutbacks gutted capital press corps. Interactivity, meanwhile, is much less appreciated by the broader population. I would argue, however, that this is so because most users are basing their opinions on inferior interactive experiences. The participators have seen the real deal, and they want more.

Pew's data are based on a random sample of 2,259 adult land line and mobile phone users surveyed by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between Dec. 28 and Jan. 19. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 2.3 percentage points overall, with confidence falling to plus or minus 2.7 percentage points for the 1,675 respondents identifying themselves as consumers of online news.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldpatterns/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Have your cake and eat it too

by Brynne Tuggle

"Forget about the blender, because that's where the true loves comes in baking, you gotta put your hands in it."

That’s the motto of Annette Council, owner of Sweet Neecy cakes, a new business in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Council is one of eight children of the famous “Mama Dip”, and she says cooking and baking is in the family blood. So Council decided to spread her wings and try out her hand at her own business. Her idea? Cake mixes that taste home made. Council says she started out making cupcakes, but soon realized she could give the power back to the people to create their own great tasting cakes, and in just three minutes.

The cake mixes come in three flavors and have everything you need except eggs, butter and milk and any other ingredients you want in there. Just mix it up, and you have a cake that tastes just like momma made. Sweet Neecy also provides dozens of recipes to make different cakes with the three mixes.

And the business is taking off. Already, Council has gotten into Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, and some Whole Foods stores across the state. Her goal is to get into more stores in North Carolina, across the country and even overseas. She has a global mission to give busy moms, career people, and boyfriends trying to impress their girlfriends the ability to make a delicious cake that tastes like it’s made from scratch.

Check out Sweet Neecy’s Web site here to find out where you can purchase your own cake mix and find dozens of recipes to make some yummy cakes.

Photo and story credit: Brynne Tuggle

Newsvine needs YOU

by Cathy Freeman

Next time you wish YOU were the one reporting the news, try Newsvine, a collaborative journalism news site powered by engaged citizens like you.

With Newsvine, you can link to or "seed" interesting news articles, plus write your own.

Watch this short video to learn how to get started. Happy seeding!

Examples of good citizen journalism

by Sean Smith

I’ve been scouring the web the past week looking for new and alternative sources of news that involve citizen participation, hoping to find some good examples of such sources.

It’s easy to find mainstream or traditional news sources on the web, but a reader needs to — or should — be aware of the political and economic twist that is typically put on the stories. Many people may not realize this is the case, but very few news stories are just the facts and information.

Many articles and the sources that run them typically have an agenda to protect the interests of large corporations and one side or the other of the political agenda.

I was ignorant of this fact until the events of September 11, 2001. Like most people, I was trying to get as much information as possible and after some time I started to notice the different angles that various news sources worked. They were no longer conveying mere facts they were making one group or another look good or bad.

As a result of this bias, there may be a shift in the way people get their news and where they get it. There are more and more websites popping up that offer a venue to for everyday citizens to report news that they care about and may not be covered by mainstream media.

This goes without having a little controversy or discussion about what makes good journalism as most reporting news don’t have traditional journalism experience and it’s hard to determine who is credible and who is not.

This is beside the point. The point that a more varied collection of news can be distributed in this manner and reach a more diverse audience. It is true news for the people.

Here is a great example of a video story run by CNN/IBN out of India. Savithri Vaithi reports on a group of Indian women who had decided to make pizzas and sell them to help financially support a home for abandoned citizens.


This story is run on the CNN/IBN website and therefore has been screened to fit into CNN’s model of covering news. Despite this, it is still a great example of good citizen news.

The story is non-biased and simply reports on what these women are doing to make a difference in their community.

This type of story would typically be ignored by mainstream media and never get a chance to inform other citizens about their cause and what they can do to help. Citizen journalism offers coverage that can get the word about the little things that people are doing within a community to make a large impact on their fellow citizens.

Vaithi does a wonderful job of showing how well citizen journalism can be reported. It is very professional in the way the video was shot and presented.

Her reporting is concise and to the point in that is simple states the facts and informs others exactly what these women are doing and how it is helping the community. There is no plea for help or any indications of political affiliation. Vaithi does a good job of proving her credibility in that she has been doing citizen journalism for a while and reports in a simple and honest manner. It’s simple information and more importantly exposure about the group and senior home.

As a result of the lack of a journalism background, many stories reported by citizens may have a unorthodox style of writing for a journalistic piece especially if reported by someone who speaks English as a second language. Yet, this doesn’t mean they aren’t good stories.

Below is a simple but informing story about the resignation of Whitehouse Social Secretary Desiree Rogers.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5309637-desiree-rogers-resigns-julianna-smoot-to-take-her-place-as-social-secretary-white-house

Although the writing doesn’t conform to traditional journalistic and web style of writing it does a great job of stating the facts and explaining the who, what, when, and why Rogers is resigning and nothing more.

Of course it wouldn’t be prudent to end this post without including a couple of links to excellent websites that encourage and run stories reported by citizen journalists from all over the world.

Allvoices.com offers citizens to instantly add their stories to the site and rate other stories helping to ensure credibility.
http://www.allvoices.com/

Another great citizen journalism site comes out of India where citizen journalism is becoming very popular, is Mynews.in.
http://www.mynews.in/

Because of sites like these, once again we can enjoy the news and get as many perspectives as possible through sites such as these so be sure to support them and share them with your friends. I’m sure they too are looking for honest news and would appreciate it.