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We the Media
The main focus of We the Media is the ongoing revolution in journalism, but it is much broader than that. It is about media and communication in general. It is a report in mid-2004 on many of the predictions that Marshall McLuhan made in the 1960s and 70s about how technology will change the way we communicate for good and ill.
It's actually somewhat difficult to write, precisely, what the book is about. Gillmor has taken a diverse range of subjects from technology, to politics, and law, from blogging to broadcast and spread spectrum, and combined them into a compelling and provocative narrative. The ideas come fast and furious, but Gillmor's writing talent keeps the reader on track. In fact, there are so many concepts discussed that there really is not enough room to summarize them all in this review.
Instead, it is probably easier to talk about who the book is for. Gillmor sets it out in his introduction: journalists, newsmakers and the people formerly known as "the audience."
Journalists
Very simply, We the Media should be required reading in journalism schools for students and professors. I'm serious. If you're a publisher, editor, or an actual breathing reporter, and you want to get up to speed on what is happening to your profession, you need to read this book.
Revolutionary shifts don't usually happen overnight, and the one in journalism that Gillmor describes didn't either. He briefly sketches a progression of changes from revolutionary era newspapers and pamphleteers to the increasing centralization of corporate media behemoths in the 20th century. However, there is a day he can point to when the latest shift became pretty obvious. That day was Sept 11, 2001. That was the day that personal media, through email lists and websites, became an important way for the story to get out.
Personally, I was at a public television conference in Wisconsin. Many of the attendees were journalists for local PBS affiliates. Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down, and the broadcast news was simply playing video of the attacks over and over. Soon, many of the other attendees were also checking Slashdot for links to and mirrors of the news gathered by Slashdot's readers. That may not seem like a big deal, but as Gillmor relates, similar things were taking place in many other net forums. The importance of these alternate news sites has continued (you're reading this aren't you?).
Because the whole book is about journalism, it is a bit hard to pick out more highlights, but Gillmor does begin his chapter on "Professional Journalists Joining the Conversation" with a Slashdot anecdote concerning Jane's Intelligence Review thanking the Slashdot community for pointing out the flaws in a proposed article on cyberterrorism back in 1999. Actually, much of what Gillmor is talking about is basically how journalists can be more like Jane's - working with and taking advantage of the fact that the audience knows more than the publication.
Newsmakers
If you are a politician, CEO or advisor to similar, you should probably read this book as well. In many ways, journalists are middlemen, connecting those making news with those who want to learn the news. One of the things technology is enabling is the ability of newsmakers to connect directly with their audience in many ways. Of course, as Gillmor documents, many businessmen and politicians don't really understand how to communicate through this new medium properly. Nevertheless, there are lessons that can be learned from the mistakes as well as some positive examples of those who've used new technologies successfully.
The People Formerly Known as "The Audience"
Basically, everybody who comments down below this review is participating in it. You're not simply an audience; you're co-authors of this review. What I'm writing here is only a starting point for the conversation. If you're interested in becoming a more active participant, in learning more about the role the once-passive, now-proactive audience is playing in creating, editing and filtering media, then you probably want to read this book too. We're all journalists now.
Free As in Speech (and Beer)
The book has an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons license. The digital text isn't available on the web yet, but should be very soon. Expect a profusion of formats, audio versions, translations, and wikis to follow. One thought of mine is that classes of journalism students should be regularly given an assignment to keep the book up-to-date.
We the Media also has a weblog, which will be a good place to keep track of the book as it develops. Just because a book has been published doesn't mean it has finished changing.
You can purchase We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
If you haven't read the book? That's the problem with most blogs. Everyone's opinion is not news.
Personally, I was at a public television conference in Wisconsin. Many of the attendees were journalists for local PBS affiliates. Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down, and the broadcast news was simply playing video of the attacks over and over.
Go back and read through the comments in those stories. Most, if not all of the 'news' was simply people who were watching TV and typing at what they heard. Not only that, the amount of incorrect news both on Slashdot and on the major media outlets that day was understandably quite large. Slashdot just gave people who weren't there a way to talk and theorize about what was happening. TV was still the best place to get info that day. Slashdot wasn't.
The medium isn't the message, per se. The message is the message. It doesn't really matter with what edium a message is transmitted; information is information.
This was reinforced recently by the blogsters at the Democratic Convention. Few said anything of consequence. That what they transmitted was using new media didn't matter. Crap is crap.
And as such, I don't think I can agree with Gilmour; while September 11 showed that personal media could be an important infotransmission tool, July 2004 showed that it's overrated, and that we still need professionals.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
More importantly, with a professional news organization, I know who I am dealing with. Too many online entries -- from blog postings to product reviews -- are not authenticated. I know who the editor is of my local newspaper and I know the corporation and politics of the company who owns the newspaper. I'll take that over Joe Schmoe because I don't know which axe he's grinding.
#!/usr/bin/sh
p df
g ue.pdf
t es.pdf
for x in 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
do
wget http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/ch$x.
done
wget http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/epilo
wget http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/endno
"The Charge Of The Blog Brigade"
(with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Theirs not to wonder why
Theirs but to blog and die
Into the valley of hype rode the six hundred.
Boredom to the right of them,
Boredom to the left of them,
Boredom in the front of them,
Into the valley of hype rode the six hundred (bloggers).
Back to actual commentary: Of course the bloggers at the convention said nothing of consequence. Nothing of consequence happened at the convention. It never does. Nothing will happen at the Republican Convention either.
Conventions used to be about deciding who your candidate was going to be, and what your platform was. But these days, we know who the candidate will be before the convention starts, and the "platforms" are designed to sound as good as possible without actually saying much that is concrete.
The result is that conventions generate no actual news. What, Kerry was nominated? Really??? Wow, that's really news!
So I'm not sure that the Democratic Convention is a good proof that blogs don't really cut it as the new news media. If there's no news, the professional evening news doesn't say much either.
Is professional training all it takes to get your respect?
I find that most professional news organizations (in my country, the USA) are trying to do whatever they can to push their agendas while also insinuating that they are impartial. It's downright duplicitous, and whats worse is that there are people who believe that their facts are totally true.
Most of the time you don't see this kind of thing in blogs, and I think the fact that the writers aren't professional journalists, and therefore aren't trained in the subtle art of fact-misdirection is one reason why. But you're right about the unverified stuff. There's no telling what you're getting with a blog.
I'd trust the average blog about as much as the average professional news agency, but for different reasons. In either case, a particular instance would have to earn my respect before I'd believe them above other sources.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
...and the "plastic surgery-riddled TV boneheads" probably don't write a single scrap of news, either.
I'm currently a professional technology writer/editor and my mandate is still to boil down and synthesize complex topics and make them readable, understandable, and as engaging to readers as possible. I don't see how anybody could find fault in that.
What sense does it make to consider an audience with more education and experience than the reporter? Why on earth would those people read the article?
Fans of the Web and the Internet at large love to repeat over and over how it's going to revolutionize everything. Maybe it is -- but for some reason, that always seems to boil down to knocking somebody off some perceived pedestal. "Oh that guy doesn't know anything, he made this mistake here and I bet twenty other people on the Internet can point out others." Great. But the Internet isn't revolutionizing anything here. There have always been people who say things like that, and there's even a name for them: armchair critics. Their presence does not take away the need for well-informed, insightful, accurate, and well-written journalism.
Journalism as a "conversation" or a "seminar" sounds really nice and new-agey. If that always worked, I guess it would be pretty great. As a counter-example, I could give Slashdot. If a cacophony of voices is all you really need to get your information, why is everyone always yelling "RTFA"?
Breakfast served all day!
The problem with the media is too much bias. The "news-as-entertainment" problem still ranks high on my list, but it's the outright political bias that drives me nuts the most.
I am not a conservative, nor am I a Republican. But I can still see the bias in the media. The mainstream news in particular has a distinct Democrat/liberal bent. This is hard to see if you're a Democrat/liberal, and you'll probably vehemently deny it exists, but if you're not a liberal or Democrat, you can plainly see it.
Heck, even a lot of liberal Greens can see it, just because the blackout of any news on Nader and the Green Party. That party decided the 2000 election, but the media acts as if it were irrelevant to the 2004 campaign coverage.
When I mean bias, I don't mean obvious blatant bias that any numbskull can see. I mean a subtle bias in the stories presented, adjectives used, body language by anchors, etc. But sometimes that bias is obvious, as when the media was having orgasms over the Clark candidacy last year. That last what, all of two weeks?
Here's a subtle bias as an example. Mrs. Kerry is a millionaire. Mr. Cheney is a millionaire. Both once had strong corporate ties, but no longer do. Yet which one will the media portray as having a corporate war chest? Which one is more often mentioned being a millionaire? Which one is more often mentioned as having corporate ties?
I am not claiming that this bias is intentional. But with 90% (IIRC) of news reporters registered Democrat, they've constructed themselves a world isolated from the real one. While the owners of the media tend to be Republican, those that actually report the news are not. If you ran across a news outlet that consisted of 90% Republican (or Libertarian or Green) reporters, you would expect those skewed numbers to produce a strong bias. So why don't you expect the same when the news outlets are all 90% Democrat?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Haven't read (much of) the book, yet, but I took this as the collective audience knows more than the reporte -- which is almost certainly true for any given topic -- not each and every individual reader. E.g., if you're a local reporter writing about a park proposal, many people in your audience are going to know more about various aspects of the proposal (e.g., the history of the location; environmental concerns related to; internal parks commission politics; etc.) -- and while some of your sources will help fill those gaps, you'll never be able to dig up everything as a reporter -- and now that's ok, because your audience can participate and help show you where you go wrong or point out pieces that you missed, etc.
Blogs, etc. aren't replacing traditional journalism, but they are changing it.
Writing is a skill, and like any skill can be learned. If one learns the skill well enough and uses that skill, one may be said to practice good writing.
However, just because one has undergone training in the skill of writing does not make one a good writer. Use of any skill usually takes practice, and masters of a skill usually have practiced carefully and conscientiously to reach that level of mastery. Of course, there are exceptions: those who are able to write well without much practice and those who will never be able to write well despite much training.
My guess is that these two extremes are explained by a greater or lesser ability to focus and organize one's thoughts.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What sense does it make to consider an audience with more education and experience than the reporter? Why on earth would those people read the article?
Perhaps they read it to find out what's "new". That's generally what the news is supposed to talk about right? If I happen to know a lot more about a particular subject than someone else, but I've just been out of touch for the past few [hours|days|weeks] then I may not have heard something that others have.
Disseminating the contextual relationship this new information has with what I, or an expert, already happens to know may be useful for the general public, especially if it's dumbed down. But as long as the new information is presented in a useful manner, then any expert can benefit from it as well.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
I'm pissed that the media isn't reporting objectively. Of course, if they did report objectively, they wouldn't be parroting the Chomsky line. I want objectivity, not just another opinion. For example, to report flat or sales taxes as "regressive" would be anything but objective.
I am not saying your biases are invalid, just that I don't want them, or any other biases, in my news coverage. For example, when the WTO meets, the reporting should be more than a mere "the WTO met today, now on to sports". But neither should it be "the WTO is evil and here's why..."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!