A few decades ago a new movement in journalism sprung up by the name of “Citizen Journalism.” It represented an erosion of trust in politics, corporate media, and civic agencies.
Utilizing Internet-related technologies, untrained reporters began reporting events as they saw them unfold. Many of their reports were and continue to be instantaneous.
Blogs were born and then legitimized. As a result “Citizen Journalism” became formularized.
Ways to use the formulas are clearly laid out in the article Five tips for citizen journalism from ProPublica’s new “crowdsorcerer.” Websites like the Huffington Post outline the PR and editorial standards for bourgeoning citizen journalists. The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism by Steve Outing offers insights from “participatory journalism to … citizen reporting with [an] organization's full involvement.”
“All journalists are citizens; more citizens are now journalists,” wrote John Burke in the EditorsWebLog.org Website article “The rise of ‘citizen journalism.’”
“The most important question the consumer of news and opinion will ask herself or himself is the question they have always asked: do I trust this source to tell me something true and useful? Some will pass that test; some will fail. Open societies that want to stay open should keep setting that test.”
Are Blogs a possible worthwhile medium that might “pass that test” in providing information that is “true and useful”?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Meet the Pressident
Appearing on five Sunday morning TV news talk shows, President Barack Obama will put the finishing touches on what journalists have dubbed the Obabarama by being the only guest on Monday’s late-night David Letterman Show.
Will this media blitz, primarily dealing with health care, work? If so, how and why?
“Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live,” wrote Walter Lippmann in his 1921 text Public Opinion. “We can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.”
“News and truth are not the same thing,” Lippmann cautions. “The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which [people] can act.”
Will Obama’s television appearances reform beliefs and reshape the environments people “believe to be a true picture”?
Only the polls will tell.
Will this media blitz, primarily dealing with health care, work? If so, how and why?
“Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live,” wrote Walter Lippmann in his 1921 text Public Opinion. “We can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.”
“News and truth are not the same thing,” Lippmann cautions. “The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which [people] can act.”
Will Obama’s television appearances reform beliefs and reshape the environments people “believe to be a true picture”?
Only the polls will tell.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Dousing Kindle
Self-proclaimed as “the next chapter in wireless reading,” Kindle offers “Over 350,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available.”
“Beginning in Fall 2009, selected ASU (Arizona State University) students will use the Kindle DX, the latest addition to Amazon’s family of wireless reading devices, instead of traditional printed textbooks,” according to the May 2009 edition of ASU news.
ASU is joined by Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia participating in a pilot program with Amazon’s ebook.
However, 17 years ago Sony tried and failed with a similar device called, appropriately enough, the Bookman. “The Bookman, an eBook reader, debuted with a CD-Rom, cell phone-sized screen and keyboard,” according to Dino DiGiulio’s August 2006 exclaim.ca article “Primal Screen: How eBook's Failure Led to E Ink Innovation”. “Despite their promise to give the book-reading commuter of Japan the kind of media portability the Walkman had brought to music fans, it failed miserably.”
Why did the Bookman fail when Kindle seems to be attracting the attention of academic institutions as well as readers in general? Did Sony release a product too soon?
One of the advantages of Kindle is the fact that college students can save money and lessen the weight of the backpacks with the device. What’s more, the device thwarts publishing companies that “revise” textbooks by updating (a euphemism for simply changing) some of a text’s chapters, graphics, and nuggets of information, and rendering out of date an expensive text for the next semester’s new, improved, more costly text.
Using wireless technology that does not rely on computers, cables, or any form of electronic synching, Kindle boasts an “electronic-paper display [that] provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.”
However, even though this 10.3 ounce device seems to be a new paperless paperback, one of the disadvantages of Kindle is that it moves further away from the pleasures of owning a traditional book. Absent are the pleasures of tactilely fondling the pages, lingering over the crisp images, listening to the crisp rattles as the pages are turned, even smelling the print or a new or the mustiness of an old book.
Will Kindle provide a new medium for journalists? Will this device give bloggers even greater marketability and publicity? Or will Kindle, like the Sony Bookman, quietly expire only to be sold like “Books on Tape” to eBay collectors?
“Beginning in Fall 2009, selected ASU (Arizona State University) students will use the Kindle DX, the latest addition to Amazon’s family of wireless reading devices, instead of traditional printed textbooks,” according to the May 2009 edition of ASU news.
ASU is joined by Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia participating in a pilot program with Amazon’s ebook.
However, 17 years ago Sony tried and failed with a similar device called, appropriately enough, the Bookman. “The Bookman, an eBook reader, debuted with a CD-Rom, cell phone-sized screen and keyboard,” according to Dino DiGiulio’s August 2006 exclaim.ca article “Primal Screen: How eBook's Failure Led to E Ink Innovation”. “Despite their promise to give the book-reading commuter of Japan the kind of media portability the Walkman had brought to music fans, it failed miserably.”
Why did the Bookman fail when Kindle seems to be attracting the attention of academic institutions as well as readers in general? Did Sony release a product too soon?
One of the advantages of Kindle is the fact that college students can save money and lessen the weight of the backpacks with the device. What’s more, the device thwarts publishing companies that “revise” textbooks by updating (a euphemism for simply changing) some of a text’s chapters, graphics, and nuggets of information, and rendering out of date an expensive text for the next semester’s new, improved, more costly text.
Using wireless technology that does not rely on computers, cables, or any form of electronic synching, Kindle boasts an “electronic-paper display [that] provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.”
However, even though this 10.3 ounce device seems to be a new paperless paperback, one of the disadvantages of Kindle is that it moves further away from the pleasures of owning a traditional book. Absent are the pleasures of tactilely fondling the pages, lingering over the crisp images, listening to the crisp rattles as the pages are turned, even smelling the print or a new or the mustiness of an old book.
Will Kindle provide a new medium for journalists? Will this device give bloggers even greater marketability and publicity? Or will Kindle, like the Sony Bookman, quietly expire only to be sold like “Books on Tape” to eBay collectors?
Monday, September 7, 2009
Getting Less Information Faster
“The speed of communications is wondrous to behold,” according to the late journalist Edward R. Murrow. “It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.”
The enormous distribution of disinformation disseminated against Pres. Obama’s health care reforms represents an obvious attempt to scare people into thinking that they are on the verge of losing something precious. Witness the lack of dialogue and the glut of emotion (mostly hate) that characterize the so-called Town Hall (a.k.a. Town Brawl) meetings.
When the 18th Century Puritans in New England were losing members of their congregation, the imagery in the pastors’ sermons became increasingly graphic. The emphasis was on the horrific. For example, Jonathan Edwards’ 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” vividly depicts the unredeemed as repugnant insects dangling over hell’s gaping pit.
Politicians aware of losing members of their constituency are also using imagery based on igniting fear and hatred. Study the verbiage. Pay attention to the metaphors, the images, and most of all the slogans that are used.
Remember what Orwell said in “Politics and the English Language”: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.”
The enormous distribution of disinformation disseminated against Pres. Obama’s health care reforms represents an obvious attempt to scare people into thinking that they are on the verge of losing something precious. Witness the lack of dialogue and the glut of emotion (mostly hate) that characterize the so-called Town Hall (a.k.a. Town Brawl) meetings.
When the 18th Century Puritans in New England were losing members of their congregation, the imagery in the pastors’ sermons became increasingly graphic. The emphasis was on the horrific. For example, Jonathan Edwards’ 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” vividly depicts the unredeemed as repugnant insects dangling over hell’s gaping pit.
Politicians aware of losing members of their constituency are also using imagery based on igniting fear and hatred. Study the verbiage. Pay attention to the metaphors, the images, and most of all the slogans that are used.
Remember what Orwell said in “Politics and the English Language”: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.”
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