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“If you teach a man to fish, they not only eat for a lifetime, but you’ve just created a market for fishing rods, bait and angling magazines.”
Unfortunately not my words, but those of Paul Bradshaw. He wrote a very interesting article about the German newspaper Bild. Mentioning that Bild has joined up with super market Lidl to sell very cheap, basic cameras. Those cameras should be used by readers of the paper, who – when seeing something news worthy- take a pic and send it to … indeed: Bild. Read the rest of this entry »
Four more thing about blogboat 1.0:
1. Quote of Dan Gillmor:
“Traditionally it’s news when man bites dog. But it’s also news when dog bites man. Especially when you know the man and the dog is yours.” Referring to the relevance of hyperlocal news.
2. Quote of my former boss Rudy Raymaekers, visionairy and working for a media company for more than 30 years.
“Working together is a problem. In the newsroom people sit together, but they don’t talk. Citizen journalists don’t work together either, their egos are too big. And the people in the newsroom aren’t working together at all with the citizen journalists.” I love this quote because it’s so recognizable, considering the challenges I had starting the citizen journalism project HasseltLokaal at Concentra Media.
3. During the afternoon session, Dan Gillmor made a plea against (most) anonymous news. According to him, it has not much credibility. Therefore, Gillmor defends Sarah Palin against the anonymous ‘cowards’ that accused her of not knowing that Africa is a contintent. More via this blog entry of Luc Van Braekel (in English).
4. The attendants of the afternoon session were asked in advance to write a discussion paper about the future of citizen journalism. So that’s what I did, and I liked it. Yet, writing is more my thing than presenting. So when I was asked to present mine, I got soooo nervous. I even didn’t have a copy with me :-). Anyway, I put my discussion paper on this blog. I titled it ‘Citizen journalism and how context can become king’.
,discussion panel, with Rudy Raymaekers second from the left, pic by lvb.net
More blogboat pictures via this link.
Yesterday I attended the Blogboat event organised by Chips vzw.
During the afternoon session, citizen journalism expert Dan Gillmor gave a glimpse of the new book he is writing. It will deal with principles for news consumers. According to Gillmor, news consumers should look at the news with skepticism and judgment. Moreover they should do research when something isn’t clear or when they need a second opinion.
“That’s exactly what the people who sold their stocks after hearing that Steve Jobs had a heart attack, didn’t do. It was their stupidity to immediately believe that false news. Which makes them responsible as well, and not only the citizen journalist who wrote the article.” (When Googling, I found a lot of people blaming the citizen journalist who wrote the news (eg this one)).
The fourth principle mentioned by Gilmor is independence. He encourages news consumers to read stuff that challenges what they believe. Last but not least Gillmor wants people to be aware of and recognize the techniques used by journalists to persuade them of something.
According to Gillmor, we are moving to the Daily Us (versus the Daily Me) or community driven news. Popularity and reputation will play the most important roles within that model. “And who ever succeeds in combining those two, will be big”. This Daily Us will be driven by thouroughness, accuracy, fairness, independence and transparancy. “Principles every journalist agrees on.”
In order to achieve this Daily Us, the participation of traditional media and the help of citizen journalists are needed, says Gillmor. But also parents and schools are of the utmost importance, in learning children how to deal with news. “Children should know that Wikipedia is the best starting point, but the worst place to stop.”
The American news channel CBS has launched the citizen journalism site CBSeyemobile.com. On the Dutch blog Marketingfacts we read that the service enables people to immediately upload their pictures and videos via their mobile phone. It doesn’t work with all providers yet. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been given too much rumour about the launch yet.
According to CBS, the service is primarily soliciting breaking news, weather, sports and political content. You can either upload your content or watch the lastest reports with your mobile phone:
Even though the way you can upload and watch photos and videos will change in the future (when most people have internet access via their phones), I think it’s a great start. It’s huge that a big news channel like CBS starts involving citizens ànd that they do it mobile. Also CNN is experimenting with the concept on iReport. Who will be first in Belgium?
That’s the entry I also posted on the CityLive blog. What I’d like to add here on this blog: I am especially guessing about the ‘why are those news channels doing this?’. And as a matter of fact, it is more than obvious (at least in my opinion 😉 ).
- First of all mobile advertising is the future . So if those news channels do things right and attract more and more visitors, they have a new advertising platform right there in the corner.
- Second of all, journalists always have their sources when needed. They don’t have to search on blogs, YouTube or Flickr for people who captured the news before anyone else -and thus also CNN and CBS- did. The breaking news is right there on their platform and thus ready to be broadcast.
Which means CNN and CBS are ‘using’ the citizen journalists in a way BUT that also works the other way around:citizen journalists use CBS and CNN as well in their quest for ‘importance’: eveybody wants to be the first to ‘break the news’. - And that’s why there is also a ‘third of all’: when people feel CNN and CBS are really doing something with their photos and videos, there wil be a growing numer of ‘brand fans’. Those fans feel important and they feel appreciated. Moreover, they’ll tell the world 🙂
Am I forgetting something, or I am going way too far? Let me know 🙂
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