DigiDave | Communication is Key

The Newspaper Industry Gets Its First R&D Lab

From the first issue of Wired Magazine - when I was 11 years old.
credit to Cyrus.

"The railroads fell victim to a classic example of forgetting which business you're in: Failing to see themselves as transport companies, they were out-competed by trucking companies who saw that their business was not trucks, but transportation.

The same thing could happen to the newspaper industry, according to Roger Fidler, director of new media at Knight Ridder, a huge newspaper chain based in Miami. "If we don't do more R&D, we will lose our industry," Fidler said."

Mantra's of Development and Innovation

A couple things I've been learning and constantly repeating to myself while developing spot.us.

1. Keep it agile and iterative.

• I can't predict how people are going to engage with my site. I shouldn't try and force them into a user experience they don't want. I must stay iterative. That's why the wiki has been so informative.

2. Ten people in one chatroom is more valuable than ten people in ten different chatrooms.

• I've tried to cut back on sprawl as much as possible. This was one of the great downfalls of Assignment Zero in my humble opinion.
• UPDATE via the Comments: When I think of "sprawl" I picture Assignment Zero. When we first launched we created hundreds (probably close to 150) of small assignments people could do. Each assignment then had "tasks" (2-3 tasks per assignment). As such - people were forced to find a small area on Assignment Zero and stay there. We created hundreds and hundreds of chatrooms with one person in each room, talking to themselves. Start small with one chatroom - see if the conversation splits - and THEN build a new room.

3. Path of least resistance.

• Given the lesson of #1 - sometimes it's best to take the path of least resistance - get something up and working so people can interact with it and you can react. Spending four or so months building a dynamic site won't do you anygood if during those four months all you did was build a site. Create and accomplish concrete steps along the way.

4. It's not a race.

• What spot.us is trying to figure out (how to pay for investigative journalism) won't be figured out anytime soon. What I'm trying to accomplish isn't a "solution" - more like a step in the right direction.

5. There is no such thing as a competitor.

• Competitors are just collaborators in disguise. This is especially true if what you believe in is the larger mission - not just your specific project.

Newsweek Advances Andrew Keen's Ignorance

I try very hard to ignore Andrew Keen's book "Cult of Amateur." But, like Terry Heaton, I too read a recent Newsweek article that proclaimed his brillance and was in a fit of rage for at least a half-hour after reading it.

ThePoMoBlog does a good job of tackling this piece. The biggest point and one I always come back to, there is no "Cult of Amateur." Keen takes natural market forces at work and the demands of random unconnected people and is turning it into a movement. By that reasoning every day after work there is a "Cult of Traffic" - and mobs of people take it upon themselves to flood the streets in an effort to cause more traffic.

Who are these traffic loving freaks and what master do they obey?

If that sounds dumb, just take a step back from the Internet and ask yourself the same thing. "Who are these Internet surfing freaks and what master do they obey?" The Internet is built on the backs of the masses. There is no way around that. Perhaps some people prefer experts but as Mathew Ingram notes Newsweek's claim that there is a movement back towards experts is unsupported. There is lots of organizing going on in the intertubes - but to my knowledge their are no movements about "taking down the experts" or "taking down the amateurs."

Perhaps I'm letting the analogy run away with me - but read Terry Heaton's post below to get a better sense of things. The final point I'd like to make: The Internet and even citizen journalism is not an expert versus amateur debate. That is a fallacy. I'm tired of that narrative.

clipped from www.thepomoblog.com I’ve had a few days to calm down after reading Newsweek’s “Web Exclusive” this week — Revenge of the Experts — so I think it’s safe to comment now. Newsweek has done what many of us feared, they’ve picked up Andrew Keen’s meme about the “cult of the amateur” and manufactured a new lede without taking into consideration the fallacy of the meme in the first place. This is how falsehood gets spread throughout the culture, which is exactly what Keen — and apparently now Newsweek — believe is the problem with “amateurs.” Let’s begin with the assumption in the title, that there is a battle underway in our culture between experts and amateurs. Says who? The so-called experts, that’s who, because they feel their protected turf is being threatened. It is, but not by any amateur movement or cult. Institutional arrogance is their biggest threat. They need to look in the mirror.

Quote of the Day

It's your world, I'm just reporting in it.

I don't remember who said it, but at a Journalism That Matters conference somebody said the following as a distinction between a professional journalist and a citizen journalist:

"A professional reports on the news. A citizen journalist shares the news that is happening in their life."

A Morning Response: We Don't Need Newsroom Leadership, We Need Individual Entrepreneurs

My new blogging buddy Yonigre Greenbaum highlighted a post to me and asked for my thoughts.

Perhaps it's because I am still in that early morning groggy bitterness, perhaps it's the rain outside - but my response is actually negative.

Not that I don't agree with Yonigre  Steve Outing, Mindy McAdams, Alfred Hermida and others who have written about the need for change in newsrooms. I totally agree. But that's why I don't need to read any more blog posts about it.

(the following is not a potshot against any of the above, who I respect and admire. I think these people are not guilty of the following: But it's something I think is becoming rampant in blogging about journalism: We have become a culture of bloggers whose aim is to critique without action).

I think the time for evangelizing is over. At this point if you are in a mainstream news organization and you don't see the need for change, the battle is lost and I'm not going to spend time trying to convince you to change the culture in your newsroom. I will simply shake your hand, wish you an honest good luck and move on.

I don't use this blog to evangelize. I don't seek newsroom converts to web 2.0 (not that anybody would listen to me anyways) and I don't want to preach to the choir because that gets nothing done.

If you want to see real change - don't tell news room editors what to do - DO IT YOURSELF.

Online Journalism Review: A Look Back at The Networked Journalism Summit

Online Jouralism Review recently asked me about the Networked Journalism Summit.

You can see the full interview and the dopey picture that they used of me (stolen from Facebook) here.

Also see pictures from the Networked Journalism summit here.

Interviewing the Top Diggers

Interested in a....

Q & A With Social News’ Top Submitters

Well. Look no further than the latest episode of the Drill Down.

"Wired Magazine & NewAssignment.net columnist (and top Digg & Propeller submitter himself) David Cohn turns the tables on Andy, Mu & Reg as he asks them the social news questions you wanted answered in this 75-minute Q & A interview. What secret weapons do they use to submit? What’s their stance on gaming the systems? Where do they think Social News is headed? Listen & find out!"

I haven't listened to it yet myself, but I should mention that the beginning of the podcast began with all four of us expressing mutual respect in all directions. I tried to ask hard questions, but in the end I have tons of respect for Muhammad, Andy and Reg as diggers and general all around dudes.

I hope to come back on the Drill Down again -- next time not as a moderator asking them questions, but as the person that they interview -- perhaps about crowdsourcing or citizen journalism.

15 Days Until The Networked Journalism Summit

The first Summit on Networked Journalism is fast approaching. I have my fair share of work to do before the actual conference. But it is exciting work - I get to report on the best practices and practitioners of the emerging art of networked journalism. I've been interviewing plenty of people and sucking out all their brain juices (yum).

I won't be blogging here at Digidave.org much until after the conference.

Why?

Because I have to report on all the conversations for the Networked Journalism Summit here -- NewsInnovation.com. That's where I'll be the next two weeks.

That combined with organizing logistics for the conference and still trying to get other work things done = no time for personal blogging.

BUT

I do have one good suggestion if you are looking for lighter reading: My journo-friend Maurreen Skowran (who is meticulous in the best way possible) has been bitten by the blogging vampire and is now a blogger herself.

Her First post is both poetic and telling.

"The Web whispered.
We didn’t hear it when it was born. We didn’t hear it start breathing...."

Goodbye New York

I remember visiting my sister in New York when she graduated from Columbia's social work program. They played "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra during the ceremony and I knew I wanted to live here.

Three months later I had a job at CJR and was on a plane -- with an apartment already lined up, living with some of my best friends from Los Angeles.

I started a blog.

I got into grad school.

I wrote for all kinds of news organizations.

I received an M.S. in journalism.

I lived

I laughed

I loved

I learned

I lost

and now --- I leave.

A journey isn't complete until you come home. San Francisco -- get ready.

Final Score

David Cohn: 5
New York: 0

I leave victorious. But I will return to battle this city again in the future.

Networked Journalism Versus Citizen Journalism Versus the Myriad of Other Names for Social Media in the News World

UPDATE: This post was turned into an article for the Press Gazette That version is shorter and cleaner, but if you want to see the sausage being made - read below.

Words often do much more than we intend. They are uncontrollable, taking a life of their own in the readers mind and the cultural nuances that readers engage in. They echo between readers, changing from sender to receiver -- like a giant game of telephone. Because everyone can have a voice on the Internet, that echo chamber can produce a lot of noise. In the end, a general consensus is usually reached, but not always without debate. (See note at the end about Wikipedia)

 

There are a lot of words I hear regularly in my recent field of work, where I'm lucky enough to work with people like Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and I can approach older (read: wiser) people in journalism like Leonard Witt and Dan Gillmore. "Community" is one of those words and I took a playful look at it last week by creating a Community Dream Team.

Since citizen media is an oft talked about subject, I do think distinctions should be made so people can clearly understand what they are referring to when they talk to each other. JD Lasica started an interesting conversation about the terms "citizen media," "social media" and "grassroots media," which itself needs to be hashed out. What I will be focusing on in this post is "citizen journalism" -- which is a subset of the larger conversation surrounding social media that JD was talking about.

"Citizen journalism" remains somewhat of a vague but very charged term. What intrigues me about the word and why I believe it is so vague are the various synonyms it has. "Participatory journalism," "stand-alone journalism," "networked journalism," "open source journalism," "distributed reporting": Without reflection, they all mean the same thing and are used interchangingly by most people -- where citizens play an active or integral role in the collection, reporting, distilling, filtering and broadcasting of news and information.

So why do we have so many terms for this? For starters "citizen journalism" itself is pretty broad and can include many acts. Jeff Jarvis has posited replacing the term "citizen journalism" with "networked journalism." I do think networked journalism should enter the lexicon of citizen media more, but I don't know if it should replace "citizen journalism." What I suggest is a further refining of the various types of citizen journalism acts.

Take for example a car crash. People who might be walking by take photos with their phones (not an unheard of act) and then post them on their blog. Who knows, maybe through NowPublic their photos will even end up on the AP. Citizen journalism? -- Of course.

Contrast that with Assignment Zero, a collaborative effort between NewAssignment.Net, Wired News and "anyone else that participated." For four months the Assignment Zero community worked on one story, collecting 80 interviews and producing eight feature articles. Citizen journalism? -- Of course.

But these two acts of "citizen journalism" are incredibly different. The first was sporadic, spur of the moment and the act of an isolated individual. The former, a collaboration over time that required dedication and commitment.

Both are labeled "citizen journalism" because the rhetoric surrounding "citizen journalism" has yet to really grow into its own. There is no vocabulary to articulate different acts of citizen journalism. How do we distinguish these two acts from another?

The first example (the car crash) seems like an act of "Citizen Journalism" (with a big C). A person going about their day who witnesses an event, captures it and broadcasts it. It was not, however, a planned decision. The individual didn't go out with their camerae with the intention of reporting. It just happened to work out that way. NowPublic currently rests its fate on citizen journalism and it is coming close to a critical mass of people who will engage in acts of citizen journalism on its behalf (NowPublic also relies on stand-alone journalism, which I'll define later).

In the case of Assignment Zero, however, people were engaging in "Networked Journalism." They were coming together for a purpose. I don't believe "networked journalism" has reached its full potential yet, but I'm optimistic.

I don't claim to be the expert or the person who should define these terms. But, I do enjoy trying to make distinctions in my own mind, it's fun and hey, it's my blog. If you don't like it. Piss off (or leave a comment to give your own opinion).

These definitions are in large part inspired and playing off of Steve Outing's Poynter post 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism.

Citizen Journalism: An umbrella term, without a doubt, citizen journalism is when a person who does not make their living as a journalist engages in an act of journalism. Simple enough right? Again, this is a broad definition, which means citizen journalism encompasses all the other acts of journalism that will be described below. But not all acts of citizen journalism are necessarily "networked journalism" or "open source journalism." These are unique types of citizen journalism. Another way to think of it: Citizen Journalism is the class and "networked journalism" is a species. SAT Question: Mammal is to Human as Citizen Journalism is to Open Source Journalism.

(More After the Break)