PressEthic

The Seattle Times published an article today titled, News Brought to you by the Average Joe, as part of an occasional series about the impact of technology on media. Technology and the media is a popular topic these days. This article focused less on big media companies putting resources to online media from traditional outlets. Instead, the premise was on citizen journalism through online blogs or news sites.

Citizen journalism, also known as "participatory journalism," is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information" according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. (Source: Wikipedia)

The site the Seattle Times reporter first references as “citizen journalism” is the Capitol Hill Seattle blog. This was not a strong example. The site appears to be on hiatus until October and it was far less “news” and had a more traditional blog feel. (Take a look at this entry as an example.)

According to the article, the site has more traditional news stories.

There are more weighty items. One post, for example, analyzes police data to identify areas with the highest crime-growth rates this year. It's a piece of reporting you would expect to see in Seattle's daily and weekly newspapers, not in a blog.

The site is definitely journalism, said its creator, even though the 31-year-old man gets to hide behind a cloak of anonymity — something most mainstream journalists can't do, but a practice not uncommon in the online world.

Is it real journalism? I don’t think so. The public’s involvement in the news process is important, especially locally, but I don’t see how this site represents that. Digital cameras, blogs, cell phones and other technology can give the “average joe” some of the tools they need to be a journalist in their own community reporting news with a local angle. The question is will citizens really do it?

Take the example of Dan Gillmor, a former reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. He launched Bayosphere.com in May 2005 as a citizen journalism project in San Francisco. There was a lot of hype surrounding the project but it quickly fizzled.

Readers comment on articles in the online editions of papers, send letters to the editors, read blogs and respond to them. But if there is a general trend toward the “average joe” not reading or watching news, will the really take the time to report on it?