Jeff Jarvis

Evangelising Networked Journalism

Neal G. Moore

Assignment:

Interview Jeff Jarvis

Reporting page:

Jeff Jarvis, Citizen Journalism Evangelist

Jeff Jarvis on why news organizations need active readers

Neal G Moore, editor, nextnews.org, interviews Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine via email April 7, 2007

Like it or not, we need labels. they bring form to what’s being considered or discussed. To that end, I think there is a distinction between the terms “crowdsourcing” and “citizen journalism." Crowdsourcing suggests a kind of perpetual and pervasive FTP Fest, where anyone can contribute to our collective understanding by posting ideas, suggestions, references, links on just about anything. Wikipedia is our best and longest running example of this.

But it hardly is journalism. For me, citizen journalism suggest a spontaneous response by “regular Joes and Janes” to find and report about previously unknown information or circumstances, or in the case of breaking news, on developments as they are happening (see Katrina, 9/11, et al).

Jarvis correctly notes that traditional media are well-served by paying attention to citizen journalism initiatives, and by opening their tent just a bit wider. Television news was an early adopter of the so-called citizen journalist. By cozying up to video shot by “amateurs,” TV newscasts have long featured dramatic pictures of spot news events and natural disasters. Those media organizations that find ways to embrace citizen journalism will benefit most when their readers and viewers can also be reporters.

Neal G. Moore: Jeff, how do you define crowdsourcing? How, if at all, it is different from citizen journalism?

Jeff Jarvis: I’m not very interested in terms and definitions; they’re meaningless unless you give them meaning. You’re doing the story on crowdsourcing. What do you think it means?

I also don’t like the term “citizen journalism” anymore—though I once did—because I think it is wrong and potentially dangerous to define journalism by who does it. This means that some will be official, professional journalists and others won’t; some will get access and protection and privilege and others won’t; someone will certify official journalists and that puts power in their hands to take that certification away. Anyone can commit an act of journalism: of gathering and sharing news. And we’re all citizens.

So I call this networked journalism, because I think the opportunity is in doing more together than we could do apart; that is the premise behind NewAssignment.net, of course. The Internet is not a medium of content; it is a means of communication and making connections. And so it enables us to work together, cooperatively, pro-am—no longer serial but parallel, additively, without regard to medium, time, or location—in ways we never could before.

The key is how that is enabled. There are many ways and many needs. Tags let us find each other’s information and connect; when we tag what we write, it is an act of creating both content and connections; it is a social act. Advertising networks help support these efforts financially. Instruction helps us do these tasks better, with more credibility and trust. Links allow us to edit and surface the best, however we define best. And so on.

So I don’t think that crowdsourcing is some limited phenomenon. It is a label given to a new capability brought on by the Internet: the ability to work together to a shared goal.

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4/17/07

Turning Categories (and Interviews) Upside Down

Posted April 12th, 2007 - 00:44AM by vivian.martin

I will soon put out a call for people to help examine certain crowdsourced projects so we can see if there are certain patterns we can name. We've stumbled a bit over whether we are looking at citizen journalism projects versus crowdsourced journalism, intuitively drawing a line separating citizen-initiated projects from those initiated in newsrooms. That distinction still seems useful when it comes to organizing reporting, though ultimately we might find such projects aren't so different. Jeff Jarvis seemed to be making that point in an interview
with contributor Neal G. Moore, who runs NextNews, an aggregate blog dedicated to citizen journalism.

Moore was clearly interested in knowing how one of the exemplars of blogging sees citizen journalism and crowdsourced journalism in relation to one another, but Jarvis indicated impatience with the desire to make distinctions or rigidly categorize various projects. Fair enough. Rigid categories often cut off thinking and discussion, one of the raps against traditional journalism. Yet some categorization is necessary to get on with the work, and right now that is the spirit in which I think Neal and others are asking the question. I'm not convinced it's incorrect to examine citizen journalism and crowdsourced journalism separately -- easy conflation is as problematic as false dichotomies -- but I kind of like the way the Crowdsourced Journalism page is now listed in the new Topic Index as "Journalism gets Crowdsourced." A good inclusive way of describing a lot of different initiatives while we trying to understand what is really going on.

Neal, by the way, did the interview by email, and I hope he'll soon post some reflections on the experience. Email interviews are still new for many journalists. The view is email is best left for clarifying information, not the main conduit for interviewing. In some ways this concern mirrors some of the same apprehension with which journalists met the journalistic interview when it was getting integrated into regular practice in the second part of the 19th century. Media sociologist Michael Schudson, one of a handful of scholars who have written about the rise of the journalistic interview, has catalogued some of the skepticism people had about the method as a way to uncover truth. Among the issues debated then was whether to take notes. In more recent times, there were debates about taping; questions about the propriety of email and IM interviews are a logical progression.

Yet one benefit of email interviews that can't be overlooked is the way interviewer and interviewee can conduct an exchange that can document the trail of substantive ideas as well as tangents. Many journalists would rightly point out that email interviews allow people being interviewed to take more time to concoct answers and spin views. A more detached observer would say people have more time to be thoughtful.

Jeff Jarvis demonstrated how the rules are being turned upside down when he "scooped" us on our own interview by posting Neal's questions and his responses to those questions. Jarvis has invited people to expand or improve on the questions and answers. I'm hoping that the crowd will do some of that with the interview Neal filed here.

4/12/07