Saturday, March 31, 2007

QotW9: Citizen Journalism

In his book, We the Media, writer and journalist, Dan Gillmor (2004) iterates the fact that readers know more than journalists themselves. He professes this is one reason why the voice of the public cannot be ignored in the virtual realm.

When providing an example, Gillmor explains that ‘people who want to improve what they’ve bought are studying how things work, whether products are traditional electronics or things with a software component, and these customers are making adjustments –hacks, as they’re known –that either make the products better or change their nature entirely’. This is to say experts of all kinds come out of the woodwork (public) online.

This sets the pace for citizen journalism. It is journalism by citizens with citizens setting the agenda (Chua and Peh, 2006). In comparison to traditions of competition, expertise and control practiced by big news companies, the marked difference citizen journalism has over professional journalism is that it shows transparency and encourages dialogue and collaboration between people (Carr, 2007).

Stomp was set up by the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) in an effort to stay relevant to a new generation (Chua and Reh, 2006). The national print giant could not afford to ignore what the digital advancement brings in its wake. It knows more and more of its readers are going online and this could harm readership. So in order to ‘get with it’, Stomp was set up with the basic principle of being a portal whereby readers generate the content.

Is this citizen journalism? There was a lot of debate about Stomp. Perhaps the answer lies behind the reason of its conception. According to Gillmor, it seems citizen journalism means that people are proactive and they volunteer to disclose information on their own free will. Stomp, in comparison, was marketed and advertised for it to be up and running.

This is not to say Stomp is a marketing ploy. It is not. In my opinion, Stomp is very much like an online community. Visitors are mostly SPH readers. Not only do they meet and exchange ideas in Stomp, they tip SPH off on the latest trends and news. Like Gillmor says: readers can know more about things than the journalists themselves.

Since Stomp is by SPH and SPH is a government dependant media, critics have a field day picking on that fact alone. How can something like Stomp portray an idea, which, in theory, exists outside the boundaries of government and corporation? What is so ‘emergent’ and ‘self-assembling’ about Stomp?

Although, I do not think Stomp is a good example of citizen journalism, I do not think it needs the backlash. Just as how Gillmor (2004) points out –feedback and assistance should be welcomed from both the business and the public.

The real representatives of Singapore’s citizen journalism are those who have readers commenting actively on their blogs or web spaces through conversation, argument and annotation (Carr, 2007). This, in turn, brings about insights and hard facts (Carr, 2007). The citizen newsmaker puts out something that piques his interest and, given time, what he put out will generate readers’ response. He can report about anything so long as what he reports produces a dialogue among his readers.

People should always remember –the name of the game is information and with the Internet, it would be unwise to totally ignore or, worse, dismiss the voices of people just because they are not trained professionals in journalism. People always have something to say and something to share with one another. If they have to utilize Stomp to do so, so be it.

References
Carr, D. (2007). All the World’s a Story. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/business/media/19carr.html?ex=1331956800&en=223e434f8bf020ab&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Chua, M. H. and Peh, S. H. (2006). Looking the media storm in the eye. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from Factiva.

Gillmor, D. (2004). We The Media. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html

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