Journalism On The Crowdsourcing Verge

This site is sooooo awesome -- a citizen journalism project for tracking crime and crime stats in Chicago. It could only be cooler if it was... Atlanta of course.

Think the AJC will work with any techy-minded citizen journalist types to come up with something this civic-minded? Wouldn't put my money on it, but it's worth circulating ideas to MSM about if you have the chance. Or APD. Then again, last time I talked to anyone at APD about anything, I got the usual "what's a blog?" question. Cyber to them means cyber crime still. I hope we understand cyber assistance too.

Another MSM crowdsourcing journalism project, about funky utility rates in a Florida community is here. This is very interesting because my condo complex received some ugly water bills lately that were, historically, way out of proportion with our typical usage/rates.

This one gives me some good ideas about crowdsourcing neighborhood water bill data and information from around my 'hood, starting with the neighborhood discussion board. Lemme get on that...


HT: via much linkage from PJNet.

Citizen Journalism

Our Leonard (I say "our" as he was one of the first people I met through Atlanta Media Bloggers. Speaking of AMB, we need to regroup, eh gang? Kinda let the group slide into Jello. I'll talk to Sherry about that at PodCamp Atlanta, where, BTW, I'll be rapping for two sessions on Saturday March 17: one at 11:30am about Old Media vs. New Media, and then again at 1:30pm on a video blogging panel. So mark your calendars for PodCamp Atlanta, March 16-18 at Emory. Come yap with me! SG - flight attendant on the social media star fleet.)

Anyways, back to the point here about Leonard Witt, he's blogging like a man on fire about citizen journalism, using the AJC time and time again as an example of what happens when you miss the boat and simply "don't get it." Get on over to his PJNet and learn something (all you'll get here is rant and attitude of course), particularly about this Open Source radio. I'm headed there now.

Journalists want to get paid to write about the community and the world they live in. But God forbid they have to sit down at the same table with it. Shame. It's a great raucous party really. They're the ones missing all the fun.

Reminds me of how so very often I'm asked if I get paid to blog. Or why would I bother if I don't. And I have to say that I get paid just fine, in full and often. It's not just necessarily with cold hard cash; fond as I am of that, I also love my fringe bennies. And sometimes, they turn out to be more valuable. Time will tell. Besides, this dude says he'd hire me to blog!

Keep hope alive.

Greatness Makes Our Happy Meals Possible

First Stephen Colbert sticks a red hot poker in the eye of the media elite at the '06 White House Correspondent's dinner. (Some say Colbert should have been Person of The Year. Ain't that the truthiness.) Now Bill Moyers is preaching from the Church of Social Media to kick-start '07.

Wonder if they're listening out there in La-La Land? Rest assured, the liars and charlatans like Edelman, the networks, Madison Avenue and certain music industry types aren't ever gonna get it. They'll just keep charging, flailing up to the front of the parade they think they're gonna lead, the parade they never even knew existed until it about turned the corner for Main Street. They'll be overrun by the circus freaks and clowns and geeks and monkeys from the back - again.

This Moyers speech is so important I hope you will take the time to read it all. This excerpt is from Craig Aaron of FreePress. net, covering the National Conference for Media Reform, taking place this weekend in Memphis. (And yeah, I'd have sold my momma, again, to have been there, but some of us are busy committing original content in our own backyards; others are simply conference addicts.)

Journalist and author Bill Moyers denounced Big Media corporations Friday in a fiery speech that opened the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis.

Moyers told a packed house of more than 3,000 activists and organizers that the independent press is under sustained attack, with a few corporations conspiring with political leaders to create an Orwellian world "in which language conceals reality, and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power are wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth."

Full video and audio of Moyers' Speech is available at http://www.freepress.net/conference

Evoking the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Moyers compared big media corporations to plantation owners and American media consumers to their slaves.

“What happened to radio, happened to television, and then it happened to cable. If we are not diligent, then it will happen to the Internet, [creating] a media plantation for the 21st century dominated by the same corporate and ideological forces that have controlled the media for the last 50 years.”

“Something is wrong with this system,” Moyers added. “This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

Moyers honed in on the issue of Net Neutrality, which he dubbed the “Equal Access Provision of the Internet,” and praised SavetheInternet.com’s grassroots and online organizing efforts, saying that Washington hadn’t reckoned with this movement “that once again reminded the powers that be that people want the media to foster democracy, not to quench it.”

Moyers called the SavetheInternet.com campaign critical, as soon virtually all media will be delivered to homes via a single high speed broadband connection. “We now have it in our means to tell a different story than Big Media,” Moyers said. “This is the great gift of the digital revolution, and you must never let them take it away from you.”

All coverage from Memphis is here.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

Or do we? Damn the syndicate?

The revolution is, once again, masked as ye 'olde power-grab. Now the Media Bloggers Association (yes, I'm a member so who really wants to be in that club?) wants to clean-up us bloggers real nice like so that we can be credentialed for big news coverage events, in this case the pending Scooter Libby trial in Washington. From today's MBA emailed (by Robert Cox) missive:

Dear MBA Member,

I was not quite ready to announce this but as this news is probably going to be mentioned in a major newspaper tomorrow I figure I had better go ahead and fill you all in tonight. As you know, I've been working on creating new opportunities for bloggers including "access" for bloggers.

Those efforts are now bearing fruit as we have our first high-profile opportunity. The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has agreed to provide the MBA with two seats at the upcoming Scooter Libby Trial.

Those members interested to participate need to send me an email expressing their interest and some preferred dates. Our plan is to put together a schedule of 15-20 bloggers. Each blogger will be given one of our two press credentials for a few days (we can play with exact dates once I have expressions of interest from members).

The blogger can either be you or someone who blogs on a group blog you run (technically members of your group blog are already members, something we are sorting out with the new membership database but that is a different matter). I am hoping to create some overlap in the schedule so there is always one "veteran" and one "rookie" in our two seats. Bloggers who participate are expected to crank out a good deal of material and participate in the syndication of the content through the MBA web site.

Maybe this is a good thing, but as Leonard Witt at PJNet asks, do we really want Robert Cox of MBA bestowing privileges we can likely access on our own, thank you very much?

Without benefit of MBA and while MSM slept, we have quietly been committing journalism (and been credentialed as "real" media too in the case of my company, WaySouth Media, Inc.) without need of anointment by the Washington media power structure, old or otherwise.

Lemme give you a quick link list of independent Atlanta bloggers who have stumbled into genuine journalism, should you need a refresher...

Drifting Through The Grift (exclusive Loveshack porn saga coverage)
Georgia Podcast Network (podcasts on new media you won't find elsewhere)
TrueGritz ( media "rights" to the Olympics)
Peachtree Screed (Mayor Franklin's racial tones)
Bernaisesource (overall excellent, original PR industry analysis)

Are there others? I'm sure there are. Send the Atlanta-based ones to me and I'll add to the list.

Is having an umbrella organization, a syndicate, act on our behalf and thus bestowing that group and its leader, Robert Cox, with the power of our compliance, at utter cross purposes with the very nature of independent blogging itself? I'd be all for getting a stinkin' badge, but under these rules?

Members also could seek credentialed status by undergoing training or demonstrating other work as professional journalists. They also must agree to the organization's ethical standards and adopt formal editorial and corrections policies.

The Future Of News Coverage

... is hyper-local. And has greasy hair and drives a filthy car. Story of my life.

So much for the Lear jets and the Ritzs network news mandarins, and their unrivaled egos, once needed to cover the news. It's all downhill from here. The people and the technology have driven change. What would Peter think?

Careful what we ask for. We're doomed to get it. How about a nice rooftop vista as a compromise?

Save The (Social Media) Date

And the date is:

February 10, 2007
8:30AM - 3:00PM
Kennesaw State University

And the event? Well, it's an event in search of a name! Some of the Atlanta Media Bloggers are in the process of organizing an Atlanta Social Media Conference on the above date. (This is not to be confused with the business-focused, ludicrously-priced Social Media 2007, where for $900 you too can learn how to blog! (Or flog, given that Edelman is involved.) Jeez, what a rip-off...

The Social (New) Media Conference In Search of a Name is driven by the Atlanta social media/tech scene, and is a collaborative effort from the ground up. So comment here to contribute your title suggestion. And sure hope to see you at KSU February 10th!

Here's more about the February 10th Atlanta Social (New) Media Conference:

Keynote: Chris Klaus from Kaneva

Leonard Witt from Kennesaw State University
James Harris from ListenShare
Jonas Luster from Social Text
Josh Hallet from Hyku

Sponsors:
What a Concept!
GA Podcast Network
ListenShare
PayPerPost
HiddenMarket
Kaneva

NOTE: There should be a website for the conference soon. I'll keep you posted here when that happens. In the meantime, feel free to leave comments here or on Sherry Heyl, the organizer's, blog.

Don't Have To Kiss Your (Editor's) Ass Anymore

The experts agree: blogging is addictive. It's addictive with an audience of 100 uniques a day. Imagine the beast you've got to feed when you're at 100K, as is writer Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan has some wonderful insights into the liberating sensation blogging fuels the writer with, thus making blogging such a powerful and intriguing medium compared to tired old media ways:

It is addictive. I also found it just amazing, as a writer who had been in the mainstream media and actually edited a regular weekly magazine and dealt with publishers, other editors, owners, and other stuff. To actually just have yourself and your readers -- to get rid of all the people you have to basically suck up to. Not to have to suck up to anyone anymore was so liberating, especially after my five years at The New Republic, which were not marked by my obvious skills at people management.

Full piece here.

But set the content-providing thrills aside (and yes, bloggers do provide content -- valuable, marketable content) and think of the wonderful garden paths blogs send the reader traipsing down.

A quick check to a blogger pal's, Chris Boese's, blog finds that Chris used to play high school basketball against the woman who just got elected Governor of Alaska, the most oil-rich state in the nation, as Chris reminds the reader. Talk about an interesting perspective you weren't really going to find in a paper.

Surely not in the AJC as they can't even recognize a good story in their own backyard. Case in point, yesterday the AJC's most popular/most emailed story was about Shirley Franklin's response to the recent John Eaves campaign ad controversy, the same ad controversy that had become a NATIONAL conversation.

But did the AJC put the story on the front page of the print version? No! They could have scrawled The Passion of Shirley Franklin above the fold and sold a ton of papers yesterday. Instead, they put a smallish image of Newt there and a bland, uninspired story about the Mayor inside on the Metro section cover, a story that told the reader nothing about Shirley's anger and emphatic stance at the Commerce Club speech on Wednesday. You'd have thought the Mayor was just whistling Dixie at the podium from their version of it!

But in reality, she was pissed-off and fired-up, and directing that fury at a room full of aging, white, corporate and civic power-suits. I know because I was there, and blogged it.

The other thing worth noting was that the news of Shirley's fiery response was cranked-out to the public just an hour or so after it occurred, not by the AJC, but by an independent blogger.

So not only can the AJC not tell a story worth a damn, nor put a story on the front page that should be on the front page because it's part of a national conversation, they are headed for a scenario where bloggers will soon start stealing their online readership, too.

The AJC deserves every bit of its declining print readership conundrum. Why these media giants still even bother with print is beyond me. Just put out a boutique-y little thing for the old folks and go at the Internet with guns blazing. If you ask me, which of course no one did.

You CAN Do Something

Especially you blogging parents and taxpayers. Jeff Jarvis is calling for a citizen journalism effort - RIGHT NOW. Says Jarvis today:

I would be eager to see hundreds of thousands of us contact our school districts today to find out the state of their security, in light of the latest rash of tragic murders in schools across the country.

Jarvis asks that when you get responses to the questions below (by emailing them to your school district), to then post the answers to your own blog and tag them schoolsecurity so that all blog posts show-up under the Technorati tag, schoolsecurity.

An explaination of what good this might do for our country's children is here. Questions are as follows. Copy and paste and email to your school or school district. Add your own q's too.

* Are all doors at all schools locked at all times? If not, what are the exceptions? How are the doors monitored?

* Are there security cameras in the schools? If so, how many? And if so, where and by whom are the monitored?

* How often are staff, faculty, and students trained in emergency procedures?

* Is there onsite security in the schools?

* If, God forbid, there were a threat within a school, what should we as parents expect to happen?

Well, get emailing! There's power in numbers.

tag: schoolsecurity