Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

Micro Persuasion, Philly Future to try 'honor tags'

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is using the honor tag system that Dan Gillmor and Grassroots Media started last week. Rubel says he would like to see the system add another level to hold people accountable for the tags they use:

What HonorTags really lacks right now is some sort of editing/policing system. This way, the community can weed out tag offenders who are inappropriately spam tags. In other words, if Grassroots Media can somehow recreate the same kind of self-policing community that watches over Wikipedia, HonorTags will become a more reliable system. Perhaps some merging with social networks will help facilitate this.

The folks at Philly Future also plan to start testing out honor tags, according to this post at Paradox1x:

... we will use these within Philly Future to help folks identify - for themselves - what they consider the intent of their own writing. I believe it will help readers - and editors - know whether an author wants them to consider a post in different important ways.

Self-tagging is imperfect, for sure. It can be easily abused. And I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject. But I welcome any new tools in my belt that can make life easier. I think this can be one.

Free bloggers taking payments from freelancers

Adam Glenn of I, Reporter alluded to citizen journalism's threat to freelance journalists in a BBC Radio interview this week, and an Accuracy in Media article published Tuesday gives a real-life example from Roanoke, Virginia:

Brian Gottstein, a former online columnist for the Roanoke Times, told AIM that he along with 6 other columnists were dismissed from the newspaper, which is focusing on a more "blog-driven" approach. Gottstein said all the columnists who were cut were contract columnists and included "mainly the web-only commentators on life, religion and politics."  The letter of dismissal, obtained by AIM states that "Interactivity and timeliness are the [sic] prevalent on the Internet today. That's why you hear so much about blogs…We've decided we need more of that at Roanoke.com. To that end, we're planning to change our model toward an interactive, blog-driven approach and away from the more formal single column format." ...  The newspaper suggested the columnists could start up their own unaffiliated blogs and the paper would link to them, but they would no longer be paid by the newspaper.

Glenn, interviewed on BBC Radio's Up All Night, said:

I've gotten emails from fellow freelancers, who say, "We already get paid so little, and now newspapers are going to be getting their content for free."

The Roanoke Times, which maintains a columnists page, now also features a page listing Southwest Virginia bloggers.

Accuracy in Media writer Sherrie Gossett and former Roanoke Times columnist Gottstein question whether the newspaper site will be able to maintain an acceptable level of quality with the new model. Gossett asks, "(A)re newspapers confusing the influence of a handful of well-written and entertaining blogs and the cumulative power of the distributed model with the age-old popularity of starting up your own (online) diary?"

It's a legitimate question, and it depends on what the paper does with the bloggers. Slapping together a list of local blogs has value, but it isn't enough. The Roanoke Times may know that and have bigger plans. What they could do is feature the best posts by the independent bloggers in print and on the Times' Roanoke.com, and pay those freelancers for those posts.

The problem for freelancers is the gap between the time when publications cut them off and figure out a payment model that keeps everyone happy.

That raises a question for me: Is there a web site that acts as a clearinghouse for freelancers and bloggers, listing sites that will pay authors per post?

Bayosphere pledge whips up blogosphere

For a basic meat-and-potatoes vow, the new Citizen Journalist Pledge on Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere is creating lots of hand-wringing.

I tend to agree with Laurence Haughton who wrote in the comments area of Jeff Jarvis' critical post at BuzzMachine:

The big question for any organization (or individual) is how specific, measurable and accountable are your pledges, mission statements, codes of conduct? Where's the bar? How can you tell when you've fallen short? Who is going to tell you, "You need to pick up your game."

The Bayosphere pledge -- to be accurate, complete, fair and transparent -- is a reasonable place to set the bar. It would be better if accompanied by tools that enabled the readers to score submissions on how well they meet those standards.

What others are saying:

Joi Ito

I think this is a reasonable pledge. One real difference between a citizen journalist and someone who isn't is whether they make such a pledge or at least agree to adhere to principles like this.

Sandhill Trek

Dan Gillmor has a right to ethically challenge the ethically challenged and any others who might want to sign on to his Bayosphere as armed and badged "community journalists." ...  I agree with Jeff (Jarvis) that a pledge is superfluous.

Pegasus News

I like Jarvis' two worder: Be honest.
But I think I prefer: Be responsible for your own actions.
How to enforce that and encourage lots of participation? That's the rub.

Keep in mind that Gillmor posted the pledge with the caveat that he wants suggestions on how to make it better. "This is not the end of the conversation about our pledge, but the beginning," he says.

Jarvis suggested that the pledge be discussed in a wiki, which Sean Bonner did. And to Gillmor's credit, he expressed no objection and says he's watching "with interest."

Aside from the basic concept of a pledge, most criticism seems to be directed at the line that reads, "I work in the community interest." That's different from the measurable benchmarks of fairness, thoroughness, accuracy and transparency.

The "community interest" issue reminds me of a discussion this week on a Benicia, Calif., schools bulletin board about whether it is in the community's interest to debate certain aspects of the local public school system's fiscal crisis. Some participants called for a hiatus from the debate in the interest of unifying behind fund-raising efforts, others (myself included) argued that debate can be a constructive mechanism of creating an informed populace and building toward consensus.

What one side believed to be in the "community interest," the other did not. That criteria may be far too subjective to include in a pledge, especially if the oath ever is coupled with a rating system.

Side note: Ironically, a school board member correctly noted Wednesday that the debate about the merits of debate was misplaced. It belonged not on a bulletin board intended for dissemination about school district information, but on one of several other local forums.

UPDATE: I'm adding a link to Adam Glenn's post on the new I, Reporter site in which he discusses the concept of citizen journalists being independent, rather than objective:

If you don't come at an issue with an open mind, and don't leave the topic thinking there might still be more ways to come at it than are being pushed by one advocate or another, you're just not trying hard enough.

Amy Gahran, I, Reporter's co-editor, elablorates in the comments section with words about transparancy.

Getting beyond Citizen Journalism 1.0

The following is a copy of a comment I made on the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, in which he laments the current state of Citizen Journalism 1.0. Blogger Alan Mutter makes some legitimate gripes about CJ that is "too inconsequential, too scattered, too opinionated and/or too poorly edited." I've tried to point out that there are signs of intelligence and some movement beyond CJ 1.0.

Take a look at a heated discussion going on this week at BeniciaNews.com about the ugly state of teacher contract talks in a 5,000-student K-12 district. It has some of the flaws of Citizen Journalism 1.0 that Alan mentions, such as people making irrelevant personal attacks and so many posts (94 as I write this) that it's difficult to wade through it all.

Still, the thread, which started ironically when a group of parents posted a citizen journalism article titled "BUSD Parents Plea for an end to the Divisiveness," gets beyond the "new babies and puppies" that Alan is getting tired of. It is raising community awareness that the school district's financial problems -- a large budget shortfall -- are unresolved despite a wrenching decision this spring to close an elementary school. The vitriol is showing how deep the divide is growing between the union and citizens who want the teachers to make concessions. The more the community focuses on the issues, the greater its chance of finding solutions.

This happens on BeniciaNews in part because the site has been around for five years and has a large following, but these sorts of discussions have occurred on the site since shortly after we launched. Yesterday, as this thread was beginning to really bubble, a reporter from a local newspaper called me to get some help accessing the message board. If she does a story in response to the message board discussion, providing an authoritative account of the issues affecting negotiations, then we're getting beyond Citizen Journalism 1.0. That's where I'd like to see CJ go: Citizen journalists use these new channels to float local issues and debate them, helping important matters bubble to the point that mainstream media pays attention and then filters through the noise to produce an authoritative account.

Full disclosure: I live in Benicia, a San Francisco suburb, have children in the schools, occasionally post citizen journalism articles myself, and now have a seat on the board of a foundation trying to raise money for the local public schools.

UPDATE:

The Vallejo Times Herald on Thursday published a story in response to the discussion on the BeniciaNews.com message board.

Will training improve citizen journalism?

Much of the discussion during a citizens media summit last weekend in San Francisco's Presidio focused on the need to educate and train non-journalists as opportunities grow for them to write about City Hall, their schools and their neighbors.

What emerged during a discussion that lasted more than four hours: At a minimum, expose them to the practices that make for good journalism. And for those inclined to learn more, develop training programs and offer editing.

But if we build it, will they come? To the training, that is -- be it online or in some other form.

At GetLocalNews, we've tried to guide citizen journalists toward some basic tenets. We greet message board users with our guidelines, and we offer tips for people posting articles.

The guidelines and tips are passive efforts to encourage quality work; authors can ignore our suggestions. It's a little harder for them to ignore the comments that other users make if they fall short of expectations. That feedback, as much as anything else, holds people somewhat accountable for what they publish.

Some citizen journalists -- those who have a message they want to deliver truthfully and effectively -- may go that extra yard to get training. I'm not so worried about those folks, because they come to the game with honorable intentions (what Dan Gillmor suggests they aim for) and won't lie or sell out (Jeff Jarvis' hope).

However, we know that a minority will be dishonorable and opportunistic when given the freedom to publish. That's why many MSM sites have slammed or jammed the door, shutting down their message boards or burying them. That's one reason they've stayed away from citizen journalism. But in doing so, they've put up barriers to the honorable would-be citizen journalists as well as the dishonorable ones. Those citizen journalists -- as well as the less desirable ones -- are finding other outlets.

So, at the same time we work to develop standards for citizen journalists, we need to keep enhancing user feedback, possibly incorporating Slashdot-like systems, giving people an incentive to take advantage of the training and education that's available.

Look for some of my future posts to explore specific ways to motivate citizen journalists to produce quality work and take advantage of training.