We Want Media

As much as I hate to imagine Jay Rosen giving speeches from the balcony in the J-Dept, maybe I don't have a choice. After all, isn't he citizen journalism's de facto leader?

Last week on InfoWorld's Reality Check column, Ephraim Schwartz wondered out loud, what if citizen journalism turns fascist?

I'm saying citizen journalism, where nonprofessionals report on and write the news, will devolve over time. Citizen journalism will become a platform for so-called thought leaders to vent their biased, possibly hateful opinions. If you go to a racist Web site, of which there are plenty, you know what to expect. But when you go to a site or read a blog that wears the mantle of citizen journalism, it is another story.

If you don't think things can get turned around in a not-so-good way, let me remind you of the one tool many dictators use to perpetuate authoritarian rule: the referendum. What could be more fair? Everyone votes, and yet it turns out to be the scariest tactic of all.

(As a side note, he brings up Topix , but not Jay Rosen's myriad of projects at all.)

Schwartz brings up the moot point of all things Internet: eventually, everything goes to hell. From niche forums that devolve into childish schoolyard debates to who actually appoints these regulators. (As for the comments, they sadly illustrate all of Schwartz' points.)

While we do like to think that citizen journalism is nice, is it really? We experienced briefly in (edit) Kristen's Brian Williams coverage with an Assignment Zero writer asking for her permission to use quotes from her blog entry. Jay Rosen might like to think this is the next step, but even on the AZ site, people are "contributors." Maybe it's from my limited time in the print world, but that’s not even considered a staff member.

While I'd like to be wrong, Assignment Zero comes across as a series of "contributors" who will be right because they're a lot of them? That leaves more room for error, and a lot more room for mixed facts. Wiki news sources, as Craig Newmark said to us, are a great idea. But disinformation is constant, and this idea of fascism seems more likely to dominate the net.

edit, 8:54 p.m.: We mistook Kristen for Andrea, and Perez for Brian Williams. Whoops.