Tapping into citizen journalism
This piece in a broadcasting trade pub - Why everyone is a reporter - really gets me excited about what could be as media struggles to reinvent itself.
I think the opportunity to leverage all this citizen journalism, to help distribute it and wrap in in the credibility of a large news-gathering organization is just waiting to take off.
As newspapers and broadcasters fight for a future and the Internet, podcasting and multimedia streaming media keep creating new and enthusiastic niche audiences, some big media outfit needs to be very bold and decide to embrace the future and pioneer a whole new way of providing truly local coverage with some of these technologies.
August 22nd, 2005 at 2:45 pm
I hope the definition of “local” is not limited by zip-code or the equivalent or that people will be restricted to one locale. For example, I’m interested in “local” news for my own community where I live but I’m also interested in news about the community where I grew up (past classmates, etc.).
Another example is more of an affinity type group (for example, Firefox developers) which I think traditional media has done well to develop (I’m thinking of specialized magazines and newspapers like “Car & Driver” or “Ms.”).
I hope we don’t throw away what works (in some cases) to get only location-based news.