Citizen Journalism in Depth

I’m a big proponent of Citizen Journalism – clearly, I’m one myself. Yes, I do have some journalism training, but because I’m employed as a blogger and a freelancer and do not have a mainstream outlet backing me, I’m not considered a “professional journalist”.

When my local chapter of the High Tech Communicators Exchange put on a presentation about this very topic, I was intrigued. I couldn’t make it to the actual presentation, but thankfully, they’re starting to get the hang of social media and posted a video to blip.tv. You can watch the whole thing here if you want, but it’s long, and frankly, I didn’t start actually taking notes till about 45 minutes in.

The speaker, Paul Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Orato, a Canada-based news site and pioneer in grassroots citizen journalism through first-person reports of global news and lifestyle stories. Paul has over 30 years experience in journalism. Formerly, he was Western Editor of The Globe and Mail; the Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Editor-in-Chief of the Winnipeg Sun, host of CBC Radio’s Vancouver morning show and Senior News Editor at The Journal, the highly-rated CBC-TV news program. (I find it very interesting that a citizen journalist site still uses traditional old world media titles.)

The things Paul said that made me start taking notes was that citizen journalists and citizen journalism sites are not looking to just tell the story, they’re being asked to live the story. Citizen journalists are encouraged to do the exact opposite of what “professional” journalists are taught to do – they’re encouraged to be subjective, not objective. We want to know how the experience made a person feel.

Citizen journalism is leveling the playing field between “regular” people and “professional” journalists. The civilized discourse that the news is, is going to become more civilized, less manipulative and less unbalanced.

The kind of stories that Orato is looking to tell are the kinds of stories that professional journalists either haven’t told or don’t tell. For example, the story of a guy who has been on more than 300 job interviews without getting a job and wonders what’s wrong with him; the story of living with the DC Sniper, as told by his wife or the story of a 5′9″, 140 lb man, who stopped a 6′4″ homeless man from committing suicide after the city of Seattle confiscated all of his worldly belongings.

These are the kinds of stories that will never ever get commissioned – they’re the kinds of stories you’ll never see on the 6 o’clock news. You’ll get the story that sells – rather than hearing the story and experiences of a man who makes his living by clubbing baby seals, just like his father, and his grandfather, the news hook is Paul McCartney going out and standing on the ice. McCartney didn’t do anything, but he was the news hook.

The great authenticator here is experience. People reporting their hearts out while focussing on the story. It’s having a sense of the eyes and ears on the ground, that sense of empathy, and what it’s like to be someone who is actually experiencing the news rather than just reporting it.

Like the X Files said, “the truth is out there”. It’s what’s going on in the world, on a day to day basis. Citizen journalism is the full impact of the truth. it doesn’t look like anything that we expected “the truth” to look like. There are 6.8+ billion versions of the truth. This citizen journalism, when it’s concerted, has more power and more value, more meaning and more utility than when you sample it one voice at a time, and it’s a voice that is growing in wisdom, knowledge and capacity.

The end result is that citizen journalism isn’t going to make traditional journalism die a lonely death. The volume of information that the public should be hearing about is still alive, but it’s all moving to the internet. What it does mean, which is something I’ve been discussing with other journalists, both online and off, and a post I’m working on, is that traditional newspapers are dying. If you, as a citizen journalist, can influence the discussion online, and get your story out and participate, you’re ahead of the curve.