Slashdot Mirror
Is This the Future of News?
WirePosted points us to a story discussing the future of news reporting. For over a year, CNN has been accepting user-generated news stories and posting the best of them for all to see. Earlier this week, CNN handed over the reins of iReport.com, allowing unfiltered and unedited content from anyone who cares to participate, provided it adheres to "established community guidelines". Analysts point to the amateur footage from the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse as an example of the capabilities of distributed reporting. Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?
... but HELL no.
"Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?"
This can be done for free. That doesn't sell advertising. CNN et al. would never let that happen. Instead they're encapsulating the user generated stuff within their own domain where they can use it to support their ad money generating bread and butter. Not embedding this stuff within their own output would be more of a threat.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
You can put a million monkeys in front of typewriters, but yet AOL is nothing like Shakespeare. Just because Sally Jo Walmart captures something on her cellphone camera, and has the wherewithal to upload it to CNN, doesn't mean that its news, insightful, or "appropriate" to their nebulous guidelines. Nothing shocking or anti-establishment will ever air, nor will anything that scoops CNN itself. Its nice and bloggy and Web-two-oh, but so are Digg and Fark and Slashdot.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This sounds fairly similar to Newsvine, a site that was launched a few years ago for the purpose of community-driven reporting. Since then, it has been acquired by MSNBC, and several of the more prominent submitters there have either been interviewed or actually done some reporting on MSNBC. Killfile, one of the members there was in or near Blacksburg, VA when the school shootings happened last year. Thanks to his contacts at the school, he was able to post up-to-the-minute reports of exactly what was going on, while the other news outlets were busy trying to get people down there (which takes several hours since it's an out-of-the-way hamlet). His professionalism in that and other instances have made him one of the biggest assets there. Oh yeah, and Newsvine also shares the ad revenue with its submitters, too. It's a great community.
One can only hope that this is the future of news. News nowadays is nothing but pundits and propaganda. Individuals have their opinions too, but they're not professional spin machines. Any bias will probably be much more obvious to people with broken bullshit detectors. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Depending on your political point of view, you might think I'm referring specifically to MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. Fact is, I'm talking about all of them.
When I can a.) call the White House and get a serious answer to a serious question, and b.) when I have a substantial amount of your trust that I'm telling you the truth, then I can do what big media does.
Without those, my story about the alien spacecraft in my backyard is equal to my story about the White House press conference.
The examples of citizen journalism cited (9/11, a bridge collapse) are about eyewitness accounts. Taking a picture of an event you happen to stumble into is hardly journalism.
When it comes to real in-depth news reporting, i-reporting can never, never replace professional news outlets. Solid reporting requires time, know-how, resources and money.
For example, the biggest story of the day is Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia. Tell me how that story can be researched, shot and written and presented by the average person. And for free? Yes, they can get reaction to the story. But putting it in context is entirely different.
There is much bias, sensationalism and broadcast "journalists" who are no more than pretty faces or loudmouth know-it-alls. Still, there are many real reporters out there doing real reporting. We will always need them.
When I first started writing news, for alternative newspapers, I thought it was easy. I knew who the good guys were, and who the bad guys were, and all I had to do was expose them. Just try it. If only it were that easy.
The most important lesson I learned as a real journalist, as distinct from a hippie journalist, is that whenever you attack the bastards, always call them up and give them a chance to respond. Let them defend themselves, and then show how they're lying. Just try it. Every real journalist (Molly Ivins, for one) will tell you all the times they thought they had the guy nailed, but when they called him up, it turned the story completely around.
There was a story on This American Life http://www.thislife.org/ about a kid who was in Europe, and talked his way into a press conference with George H.W. Bush (the father, not the stupid one). Good work so far. Then he got a chance to ask the President of the United States a question on the environment. Bush said that he supported nuclear power because it would do, overall, less harm to the environment. He actually made some good points.
The kid hadn't done his homework. He didn't know how to frame a good question that would pin the bastard down, and he didn't know how to follow it up. He didn't know shit about the environment. Bush had probably answered the same question a dozen times before, knew more about the environment than the kid did, and knew how to give a good answer. TAL played a tape of the press conference, and it was painful for me to listen, because I'd been in that same situation so many times before. (If you want to become a citizen journalist, you can practice getting prepared by looking up that story on the TAL web site. This will give you an idea of how hard it is to do research.)
Look at what I think is one of the best news sources in English: Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/ Take a look at this: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/28/the_democrats_suharto_bill_clinton_richard There is no way that any citizen journalist is going to be able to question Richard Holbrooke or Bill Clinton about human rights the way Alan Nairn and Amy Goodman did. Or this http://www.democracynow.org/features They know their facts thorougly.
Who do you want grilling your so-called elected leaders -- Amy Goodman, or some well-intentioned "activist" who doesn't know his facts (like those ringers they have in the audience during the presidential debates)?
I'm not defending the White House press corps either. Sure, the average stoned activist could do a better job than Judy Miller, but that's a pretty low bar.
There is one case where citizen journalists can do a good job, and that's as first-hand eyewitnesses. I remember going to an anti-war demonstration during the '60s, and having the New York City police viciously attack non-violent demonstrators (including me), some of whom had brought their children, and put some of them in the hospital with permanent injuries, for no reason that I could see (or that the City's lawyers could come up with in subsequent lawsuits). Running for safety, I came across a bunch of guys with press badges, huddled safely away from the scene where they couldn't witness the police brutality. On WBAI-FM radio, we heard first-hand accounts of what happened on the scene, which was consistent with what I saw.
Next morning, I picked up the New York Times, and saw a complete propaganda job, quoting only the police and City officials, claiming that the demonstrators had started it, it was the demonstrators' fault, and the cops had behaved with proper restraint. The Times didn'
Hear hear!
What news requires is synthesis, taking information from all around the world, creating context, and informing people of what it all means. User generated news will never be able to compete with someone who is paid to investigate, understand and report professionally.
Unfortunately modern American news (from what I've seen) has completely dropped true synthesis in fear of bias. The false dichotomy of that there are 2 sides to every issue, even factual ones, is what makes news into simple parroting of press releases and dry facts, pushing all synthesis to the realm of punditry, which has no credibility whatsoever.
So while user-generated news is probably rising, and traditional news outlets are probably hurting in a big way lately, I think it's all because the news lost its spine and won't concentrate on what makes news great. A new organization will probably rise over CNN, Fox, MSNBC.....but the AP won't die.
I agree, but for some slightly different reasons that I'll get to below.
I agree that the CNN's, MSNBC's, NYT's, et. al are guided in part by the profit motive, but news in and of itself goes far beyond just putting asses in the seats.
The free press, aka the newsmedia, is a *cornerstone* of our country. It is the 4th estate. The newsmedia, at its best, is a check on government power, and the founders of our country understood this, and promoted it.
Now, newsmedia isn't just reporting of facts, it involves editorial decisions. What stories to cover, how to cover them, how long the article should be, who is sent to cover the story, what the headline reads, and where the story is put are all the kind of core decisions that filter the news from a flood of uncategorized facts to a understandable informative piece of journalism. No one has enough time to filter all the day's information for themselves, that's why we have editors.
I am a harsh critic of today's mainstream media, as I imagine you might be. But let's not forget that we need the news done right in order for our country to operate properly. I hate tabloid journalism like Fox News more than most people because I work in the media, and I know how harmful it is for that network to call itself 'news'...it's entertainment, a plastic husk fashioned to resemble true journalism, but inside, instead of facts, there is nothing.
The answer to the question from TFA is definitely 'hell no' partially b/c of the reasons given in your post, but more importantly, because any sort of internet user provided journalism will inevitably need an editorial function for it to be usable.
Thank you Dave Raggett