Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

TV getting CJ religion

More television stations and cable companies are starting to join the citizen journalism movement:

• New England Cable News Network on July 15 will begin accepting viewer-produced videos to broadcast on its network and to post on its web site, the Boston Globe reports. (Link props to J.D. Lasica at New Media Musings.)
• KRON-TV in San Francisco has launched The Bay Area is Talking, which features a blog by KRON online news manager Brian Shields and aggregates posts from Bay Area bloggers.
• KRON mimics WKRN-TV's Nashville is Talking, which launched in April with Brittney Gilbert doing the blogging and featuring a local blog aggregator.
• KRON and WKRN are moving to a videojournalist model, switching from the usual two-person news crew to one person who does the reporting, camera work and editing. It's a concept that has its doubters.

NECN's announcement on its home page reads:

COMING JULY 15: NECN wants you to join the newsgathering effort. VIDEO NEW ENGLAND is our project to have viewers send in video, directly through our website, for use on air and on the web. All you need is a camcorder and a computer. Join the conversation. Tell us your news. Come back July 15 for VIDEO NEW ENGLAND. In the meantime - get out your video camera and start shooting!

The latter efforts don't make the kind of statement that NECN is making, but they're reminders that it's not just the Lawrence Journal-Worlds that bear watching when we talk about citizen media. Keep an eye, for instance, on Current TV, which recently announced its payment policy for video submissions.

In an ongoing Poynter Online discussion this week, which blogger Tim Porter discussed today, Kathy Gill of the University of Washington Digital Media Master's Degree Program reacted this way when the participants were being too newspaper-centric:

There is no difference, technically, between a newspaper and a TV station. Both use a medium capable of delivering multi-media stories for the news consumer who wants to see-and-hear (v "read").

Trying to redefine privacy in a transparent society

A followup on "Reporters Are Everywhere": Check out this fascinating commentary at Balkinization titled Of Privacy and Poop: Norm Enforcement Via the Blogosphere.

Writer Daniel Solove looks at the case of a Korean woman who has been humiliated on the internet after someone captured her photo on a subway train when her dog did what dogs do and she refused to clean it up. (Balkinization cites Boing Boing, which got the story from Don Park's Daily Habit.)

Solove writes:

The dog-shit-girl case involves a norm that most people would seemingly agree to – clean up after your dog. Who could argue with that one? But what about when norm enforcement becomes too extreme? Most norm enforcement involves angry scowls or just telling a person off. But having a permanent record of one’s norm violations is upping the sanction to a whole new level. The blogosphere can be a very powerful norm-enforcing tool, allowing bloggers to act as a cyber-posse, tracking down norm violators and branding them with digital scarlet letters.

He suggests that new laws will be part of the answer, but acknowledges that legal efforts face roadblocks:

I believe that, as complicated as it might be, the law must play a role here. The stakes are too important. While entering law into the picture could indeed stifle freedom of discussion on the Internet, allowing excessive norm enforcement can be stifling to freedom as well. ... Could the law provide redress? This is a complicated question; certainly under existing doctrine, making a case would have many hurdles. And some will point to practical problems. Bloggers often don’t have deep pockets. But perhaps the possibility of lawsuits might help shape the norms of the Internet. In the end, I strongly doubt that the law alone can address this problem; but its greatest contribution might be to help along the development of blogging norms that will hopefully prevent more cases such as this one from having crappy endings.

More alarms sounded at Desert of the Mind in a post titled "1984 = S. Korea":

So you have to watch every move you make, because everybody's watching. And that, of course, discourages anyone from standing out, taking a chance, being different in any sort of way. It's a lot safer to conform to the group consensus, to follow the groupthink, to be in the thick of the mob. Because they'll be watching, what you say, and what you do, and what you think. CONFORM OR DIE!

What's really gotten everyone stirred up is the mob mentality that led people not only to out the young woman with photos online but then to try to identify her and her relatives. So, the problem isn't necessarily that the girl was humiliated -- reasonable people could disagree on whether she deserved to have her photo posted online -- but that some people wanted more.

UPDATE: Over at A Networked World, Earl Mardle responding in part to my previous post, counters some of the panic over the loss of privacy. He says the quantity of material on the internet will bury the more mundane invasions of our privacy, and he points out that the loss of privacy cuts both ways, meaning that the mobs will get away with their misdeeds less often:

... we will tend to be protected by the very long tail of the Internet Power Law. Our nose-picking may be blogged, but it will probably get buried amongst the much more interesting activities of Janet Jackson, Camilo Mejia, Dave Chappelle, Michael Jackson and Brad Pitt.

While picking our noses may be less than enthralling, with so many cameras taking millions of pictures every day, practically everything is being recorded. Which is making it harder and harder for those prepared to take the law into their own hands.

Blogger: Bayosphere plans to ask authors to declare their roles

Bayosphere.com, which last week stirred up the blogosphere with its citizen journalist pledge, now is planning to ask contributors to describe themselves with something called "honor tags," according to a post by BL Ochman of whatsnextblog.com.

Ochman says the honor tags were outlined in an email Bayosphere's Dan Gillmor sent to Media Bloggers Association members. The soon-to-be-launched honortags.com, according to Ochman's post, will ask contributors to describe themselves either as Journalist-news, Journalist-POV, Pro-Marketing, Pro-Employee, Advocate/Enthusiast/Fan, Personal, or Fiction. Or if they choose not to declare, they can select UnTag.

As with the CJ pledge, bloggers probably will debate the merits of this system. But what really matters is not what the blogosphere thinks, but how Bayosphere (a) solicits user feedback to help improve the honor tags system (one blogger built a wiki for the Bayosphere pledge, but it hasn't evolved much from the original) and (b) gives readers a tool to dispute or vouch for an author's honor tag.

'Reporters are everywhere'

If we turn into a society where, as Earl Mardle says at A Networked World, 80 percent of the population has a blog, will we wind up with a Big Brother culture where we can't pick our nose in our car for fear of being humiliated on someone's weblog? Or will the positive aspects of a more transparent society outweigh the Big Brother negatives?

As the privacy backlash grows -- as it surely will in a society where those who don't have blogs still will have camera phones and friends with blogs -- what sort of new standards of law or etiquette will arise?

Lots of questions. Not many answers yet.

A thought drawn on my own experience living in a town, Benicia, Calif., where GetLocalNews.com, my employer, has operated a community news web site for five years:

My knowledge that BeniciaNews.com enables anyone to post comments (which has been possible almost since our launch) or articles (for more than two years) has affected my behavior at least in small ways.

Having seen comments on the message board about people's driving habits, I am more cautious when I'm behind the wheel. The possibility of being ticketed, getting in an accident or injuring myself or others already were deterrents to speeding or rolling through the new stop signs that seem sprout weekly. Living in Benicia, the possibility that someone might rate my driving in a message board is yet one more reason to drive carefully. At least til I get out of town, where citizen journalists are few and far between (for now). Just kidding. Really, officer.

Mardle's post ties together Judith Miller, shield laws, the Downing Street Memo and the future of citizen media:

I've been watching the growth of Citizen Media for a year now and it seems to me that it is just hitting its straps and if it keeps up this way, there will be no great need to protect journalists because, when 80% of the population has a blog as a matter of course, and just naturally wants to talk about things they do and see and, dammit, gets the idea that they can ask questions and publish the answers, that bright line between "the public" and "the professional" will fade quickly away.

When every miscreant and/or politician realises that "reporters" are everywhere, listening to, recording, and distributing everything they say, and taking photos of it as well, their ability to corner, embargo, tie down, leak and generally manipulate the media will go away fast. Read the rest

FEC continues hearing on internet and campaign finance rules

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh provides an excellent roundup of the options that Federal Election Commission is considering as it looks at how and whether to apply campaign finance laws to bloggers and the internet: say that bloggers are journalists, set a dollar limit, say the internet is radio, do nothing.

Much of the blogosphere is screaming for the "do nothing" approach. It may be that none of the other options are enforceable. I don't care for the idea of the FEC deciding who is and who isn't a journalist.

The hearing continues Wednesday.

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?

EFF sues to protect news site's use of product name

Do you want to start a web site or blog about a company or product and use its name in your site's title? A French pharmaceutical company, Sanofi Aventis, doesn't think Medical Week News should be able to do that, prompting the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue.

Here's EFF's news release on the lawsuit regarding Acomplia Report.

UPDATE: More legal stuff, as the Federal Elections Commission held a hearing today on the question of whether campaign finance rules should be extended to the internet.

Where's the transparency - squared?

The Boston Globe raises concerns in "For a fee, some blogs boost firms" about businesses paying bloggers to tout their products without either party disclosing the relationship.

Blogger transparency is It's a valid issue, but the Globe's piece on Boston.com doesn't offer the ability for readers to post comments, one of the best mechanisms for making journalism transparent. So, unless you go hunting, you won't see that some of the bloggers are responding on their own sites to the Globe's story:

Susan Kaup, a blogger who has some complaints about the story, says on her own weblog, "At least we have our blogs to set the record straight." Whether or not Kaup has legitimate gripes with the story, why not let her respond directly with a post that Globe readers would see?

Jeff Cutler, another blogger featured in the story, also responds on his own site. His blog has the same shortcoming as Boston.com, no ability for anyone else to comment.

More critical comments about the article here at pc4media.

So, the blogosphere is buzzing with discussion about the Globe's article. But none of that discussion is happening on the Globe's site, costing Boston.com some potential traffic. More importantly, should the Globe wish to respond to the criticisms of its article, it doesn't have a visible vehicle for doing so.

The story is not new -- here's an AP story published in January and a post at Micro Persuasion following Country Music Television's deal to hire a blogger recently  -- but it's an important one.

The Globe story quotes Ed Shull, the CEO of USWeb, saying, "'In our opinion, paying bloggers is no different than Tiger Woods getting money to wear the Nike logo."

The difference, of course, is that the public is well-aware of the endorsement deals that athletes have. Most people know that when Tiger Woods wears a Nike cap, he's being compensated to do so. I don't think that most people would assume that a blogger who mentions a florist is being paid for the reference.

It's all about disclosure: that the payment is being made and what, if any, control the business has over what the blogger may say.

UPDATE: Just ran across this Ad Age column via IWantMedia.com. It's worth a few laughs.

Understanding the Grokster ruling

Wading through all the info on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Grokster case can be a challenge. Here are some blogs and news sites that either are putting together comprehensive, well-organized packages; producing good original analyis; providing links to the best reports -- or all of the above:

File-swap fallout (CNET's News.com)

Ernest Miller

Blogosphere weighs in on Grokster ruling (Darknet)

PaidContent.org

Daily Camera holds seminar for MyTown contributors

MyTown, the Boulder Daily Camera citizen journalism venture, has been conducting a series of seminars aimed at getting local residents, groups and businesses to post content on the new sites. Amy Gahran of the new I, Reporter, who is skeptical about MyTown, attended Thursday's seminar and  filed her own report:

I was pleasantly surprised that about 25 people attended at 9am on a Thursday morning -- I think that actually indicates a fair amount of public interest.

While Gahran has expressed doubts about MyTown's ability to attract more than event listings and community photos, she had good things to say about the seminar. Editor Kevin Kauffman has said Gahran and others should give MyTown more time before passing judgment.

MyTown launched in April, so it's still early. Let's see whether these seminars generate the kind of citizen journalism that Gahran is promising on I, Reporter. And let's see if MyTown can figure out ways to encourage readers to post content that will generate discussion.

A check of the Boulder MyTown site's home page shows that so far it is being used almost exclusively as a bulletin board for announcements. That's not all bad. Perhaps the site is filling a need. But those items aren't stirring up comments from readers either.

There doesn't appear to be anything to prevent a citizen journalist from posting harder news, so it may simply be a matter of time, a matter of the right person tackling the right issue.

What MyTown could do is promote the ability to spout off on controversial or substantive issues. The language on the welcome page, nudges people more toward the little stuff:

Now we need you to provide the nitty-gritty details that make your community special. No news is too small - from Little League to college scholarships, professional accolades to pie-baking contests, volunteer opportunities to neighborhood watch programs.

The FAQ suggests meatier items, such as reporting "about a decision that is being made" or something "as edgy" as a piece on a rash of home break-ins. (If they're going to use the term "edgy," they might want an edgier example. Maybe a rash of night home break-ins in which the perps take Polaroids of the sleeping residents and leave a copy for them to find when they awaken. Now that would be edgy.)

MyTown's FAQ also directs citizen journalists to stick to straight news in their articles and to save their opinion for the forums and blogs. The most likely candidates to be citizen journalists may be the paper's current letter-to-the-editor writers. They love doing opinion. But those blog and forum items aren't on the MyTown home pages. Just the links to them. Put the blogs on the home page, and you might start getting edgier content than the Optimist Club meetings and bike club items now appearing.