Scan-N-Land

Wikipedia Founder Lukewarm on Citizen Journalism?

Nov. 16

Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits has an interesting blog today questioning whether Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who spoke at the annual Hearst Changing Media Landscape panel discussion Tuesday night, is less enthusiastic about citizen journalism than a traditional news editor.

The event, hosted by the Columbia School of Journalism was moderated by Sree Sreenivasan and included new media luminaries Bill Grueskin of WSJ.com and Kevin Sites of Yahoo. However, the author of the blog, A. Adam Glenn, contrasted the presentations of Wales and Albany (N.Y.)Times-Union editor Rex Smith, who also pens an online column.

Although Wales' WikiMedia Foundation includes Wikinews, a citizen journalism site, the Wiki founder seemed troubled by citizen journalists propensity to cover only stories that they are personally interested in while professional journalists provide the "work-horse reporting".

In other words, citizen journalists tend to provide commentary or analysis, with sometimes questionable objectivity, while mainstream journalists write the stories they are assigned in an environment that provides "mechanisms to ensure reporters are not just pushing an agenda", according to Wales.

Smith fondly recalled his early days in journalism at a small Indiana newspaper where one of the top reads was a column by a local elderly woman on the social "goings-on" in a nearby community. "That column 'captured the marrow' of the community in a way that most newspapers today fail to", said Smith, whose paper plans to embrace citizen journalism.

This, I believe, is that middle ground in crowdsourcing - the concept of hyperlocal reporting.

Mike Mills, who spoke at our class last Saturday, mentioned Rob Curley, VP of Product Development at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, as being one of the early digital journalism gurus emerging from the ljworld.com and lawrence.com interactive journalism crucible.

Mills said of Curley, "he is actually an old-school journalist" who once stated "The problem with newspapers is that they forgot how to cover the prom."

This chestnut holds the key to the value of crowdsourcing: there aren't enough professional journalists to cover your block in your neighborhood, not to mention providing online video of your kid hitting the homerun in his little league game. All of the videocams and cellphone cams are in the hands of the people who can cover hyperlocal news.

Adrian Holovaty, self-proclaimed "mad scientist" at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and another Lawrence.com alumnus, named Rob Curley as the innovator in rapid web development for online journalism and serving up local interest stories as quickly as major events.

Speaking of Lawrence.com to a programmer's conference, Holovaty says: "Rob Curly - he was our boss there, and he really encouraged this really really rapid web development. It's essentially web development - computer programming - with journalism deadlines. It's a fusion of those two concepts."

"So, one of these trials by fire was when Rob came up to us and he said 'Hey, it's summer, that means it's time for little league.' and he had this wacky idea - why don't we take local little league, which is about a hundred... more than two hundred teams or something like that, and treat these teams like they're the New York Yankees."

Curley identified the raison d'etre of citizen journalists by covering a hyperlocal event in equal stature to a major-league event, thereby generating local reader interest.

-Michael Hamner

posted by Mark H. @ 11/16/2006 09:10:00 PM