Citizen journalism and the storytelling instinct

There are many reasons that citizen journalism is not the latest fad, and one of the most compelling to me is that its roots are so deep. I'm not referring to the Thomas Paine-type of rabble-rousing that many of us citizen journalism boosters use as a classic example. I'm thinking of something more primal, the term my cousin, a professional storyteller, used when I asked for her thoughts.

In his new book, Darknet, JD Lasica quotes Henry Jenkins of MIT explaining how this impulse went into hibernation: "There was a brief moment in human history where mass culture pushed the other stuff out of the way. Somehow we became convinced that only a few special people have talents or visions worth pursuing. But that moment is ending... ." (Lasica is publishing installments of the book weekly on the web.)

David Berlind discusses Yizkor books, first-hand accounts of Jewish life before World War II, as a precedent of blogs and wikis in a post titled "Sixty years later, technology triumphs over evil." Berlind points to the words of M. Sh. Geshuri, who said, "A common principal in Yizkor Books is that they are written by people whose profession is not the pen." Berlind's post is not so much about citizen journalism as it is about the power of the internet to help people piece together connections with their distant past. It's a touching personal story.

The quote in Lasica's book from MIT's Jenkins made me think about why I got into journalism. As a child growing up in the 1960s, I could rely on TV for stories. I read books, and I recall my father occasionally telling bedtime stories. But TV certainly did stifle the creative urge. Why make up our own stories when we could sit in front of the tube and watch The Brady Bunch or The Waltons?

While many of my college classmates talked of getting into journalism because they wanted to change the world (this was early post-Watergate), I believe that my motivation came at least in part from the discovery that journalism was a way to tap that dormant storytelling instinct. I don't think I was very conscious of that motivational factor, but in retrospect believe it was there. Growing up on Mike Royko and experiencing the intensity of the Chicago media -- when it had three major dailies competing with each other -- also were major influences. It was later, as I began reporting and saw readers act upon the information I provided, that I saw the power of journalism.

Comments

[Eve]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/06/BUGF9D2HAO1.DTL

I'm sure you saw this story, but just in case you didn't, here's a link.

[Ari Soglin]

Thanks, Eve.

This PBS Online NewsHour package, may also be of interest to some folks:

News on Demand
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june05/news_6-06.html
To stem a decline in audiences, news organizations are rolling out new media technologies that allow people to get their news in different ways and, in many cases, decide how, when and where they want to receive it. Terence Smith examines some of these new innovations and their impact on the news consumer and on journalism in general.