Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
You can get PDFs of the entire book from http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/index. csp.
I studied Journalism in college, and I don't recall a single instance where we were taught to consider an audience with more education and experience than the reporter. Matter of fact, everything seemed to boil down to taking a complicated story and making it understandable by the average reader. It wasn't purposely arrogant, but you can imagine how the result would parallel condescension.
That methodology worked better when I studied (in the 80's), but today's plastic surgery-riddled TV boneheads don't have a clue.
I think that you are right in that the most important thing about getting news (or any information) is to separate the facts from people's perceptions of things. This is an inherently difficult task because everyone communicates only what they perceive. The great thing about /. in particular is that the moderation system helps to promote opinions or comments that are factual or insightful in some way. Everyone still is responisible for filtering the opinions of others so that they can form their own more informed opinion.
"Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was." --Theodore von Karman
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.
Blogs are going to change the world. Example:
OLD, TIRED MEDIA: "The Associated Press reported that Saddam Hussein was captured yesterday by American forces."
NEW, EXCITING MEDIA: "omg like kos reported that he saw on chris's blog that john trackbacked to mike's journal where he read about bob's girlfriend's brother's cousin who was like watching Fox News (fair and balanced my ass! lol) and they said something about saddam i dunno current music: brittney cleary - im me current mood: corpulent"
Notice the synergy of information and the ease by which information propagates throughout the blogosphere.
As long as opinion is not the dominating factor of the news item.
All of the big media conglomerates seem to have an agenda to obtain/maintain viewership.
Some go for a demographic (ie. - conservative or liberal). Some go for the sensational (Horrible tragedy narrowly averted by patriotic quadriplegic albinos).
For those willing to sift through the personal biases, having a large source of new items is good to discern the actual facts more easily.
Like the story a ways back on the eBay scammer who was also discovered to be fraudulently claiming death benefits (donations).
Hmmm.
Insightful is clearly a mass perception thing - or at least, something can be individually insightful for N people. Hence a mass can determine if something is (in the large) seen as insightful.
On the other hand, just because a whole pile of people in a non-random sample population agree that something is factual doesn't actually make it factual or even necessarily more likely that it will be factual.
Moderation is interesting, but meta-moderation was one of the steps (and I'm sure things will continue to evolve) to address the weaknesses in basic moderation. Obviously, moderation is no Panacea.
One thing professional news sources can contribute is professional-grade investigative research, proper referencing and citation, along with providing identifiable reporters, employers, etc. thus allowing one a chance to ascertain whose self-interest might be being served, to assess the quality of the research and to evaluate the evidence. Bloggers rarely follow such a rigorous method.
On the other hand, with the Internet starting to affect the pace of modern news reporting (plus competition and cost cutting and media consolidation), the net effect may be *less* research, less validation, less formal citation, more op-ed pieces disguised as news items (very common today), and less verifiability, identifiability, and accountability overall in the news industry. That's a sad state of affairs, but it seems to be the way the world is going.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
You're both right, really. take for example the presidential debate (i think it was nixon and kennedy, not completely sure) which was the first to be broadcasted both on TV and Radio. Radio listeners thought nixon won, tv watchers thought kennedy did. So while the medium isnt the message per se, it can affect perception of the message, which is nearly the same.
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!