BuzzMachine

Okay, if we’re going to start a meme, let’s examine the original record via Google.

JJ. jesus christ, is it my overweening sense of importance or is what me and trent just did and are doing anexample of what you’re talking so sensibly and smartly about, and were pushing, I know, long before Trent Lapinski and AL MacLeese ran into each other on the INternet and made a pretty good shot at finding out a truth that the national media tasted and spit out, like it was iodince or something. How many people in the media did not answer me or respond to me during the past three months, welll,. ince since March 27 when I first became aware of Trent Lapinski’s brave and astute assessment of MySPace. WTF, he must have th0ought. you can’t even find out who owns thie outfit? Is something wrong with that, Trent said, and since the giuy has been consorting with computers since the age of five, and studiously sitting somewh4ere and readin g and finding out what is gong in the world, he perservered and, unless I am crazier than an outhouse owl. I believe Trent, in the valley of the wags, may just lead to a good way to run something like MyuSpace, if ew must, but not by these upstart start-ups who know fuckingawell that they can baffle us with bullshit because they’re running stuff we, the most of us, have no clue about. So what JEff Jarvis says seems to be valid and an indictmenty of people who get a couple of inches and take a coupl;e of miiles, guarding their wonderful postion on a loftier plateau. but it could be that them days are over and the journose on newspap0ers may have to goout and get a real job. al macleese from hallowell, where the skies are blue between thunderstorms and eight thousand mallards just flew by my window on Water Street.

It seems like the best way to follow a story these days is to subscribe to a news feed based on the story that you want to follow. Then you will be sent new articles pertaining to the story as they are published.

by george, I think he’s got it!

“citizen journalism” is one thing–citizens starting their own papers or websites in underserved or politically balkanized areas or writing on hotbutton topics no paper publication will touch is probably the most constructive way of looking at that concept….

Yet how you are describing “networked journalism” is an encouraging new way of looking at the relationships between journalists and the-people-formerly-known-as-the-audience. By all means link to our blogs and our conversations–and please free to add to them! By all means ask us for our input on topics (like they are doing at Minnesota Public Radio)! Don’t necessarily rely on us (in other words, find your own scoops) but see what’s bubbling ’round about in the wired world outside of your newspaper’s homepage and investigate it (that’s kind of a journalist’s job, don’t you think?) And, perhaps, ask us if we want to share a byline or write our own if we have a specialization you don’t (that’s called freelancing, I think?). Don’t forget to cut us in for a fair share in those cases, and we’ll like you even more…

Jounalisim, after all, is as much a process as a profession. This just adds some cool new dimensions to the process.

Good thinking Jeff!

I think that the term “network journalism” is very appropriate. Journalists engage in the process of social networking when they both research their articles and post published articles. The centers of these networks are the journalists who have the most links because this means others will use their work. However, the centers are not the most important component of a network. Without the outliers the network does not exist.

Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html

We have been searching to figure out a million ways to not call what we do at NowPublic….’citizen journalism’. To most people outside of the digerati it is illogical. It’s like saying you are a ‘citizen doctor’ or ‘citizen lawyer’. It is uninviting and often intimidating for most.

Congrats Jeff, you have come to the closest meme that I think captures what we are all doing. I would still leave out the journalism part and go with “Networked Media” or “Networked Reporting”.

Just a thought…..

Why not just call journalism “journalism” — a word the citizens, amateurs, networks, distributors and professionals can understand? Journalism can be “practiced” in all sorts of ways, and by virtually anyone. You don’t even have to be a citizen or a professional; you could be a foreigner, or even an alien from outer space. But I do agree with your overall beat: journalism is not some exclusive club; it’s something that takes many forms, including all the ones you describe.

I’ve used the term ‘distributed journalism’ in the past, but ‘networked journalism’ has a definite ring to it :)

Steffen Büffel researches in the field of journalism, weblogs, citizen media etc. and uses “Netzwerk-Journalismus” as a key concept in his dissertation. He writes a weblog – mostly german, though. Might be an interesting contact for you.

As the extract from my blog which is picked up above is a quote from Buzzmachine, it needs a bit of explanation. The next bit makes it clearer: “Journalism has always depended on networks, networks of sources and people prepared to publish. Journalism cannot exist without networks whether they be in cyberspace or the physical world. To appropriate the word in this way is entirely wrong.” But I also have doubts about the way the word jurnalism is being used, so this debate on the nomenclature of the web is welcome.

Naming a thing, a concept, an idea, is problematic indeed – for many reasons. “Citizen Journalism” is too exclusive, it reifies journalism’s troubled ties with the (democratic) State and its ruling institutions, and so on.

However, the notion of ‘networked’ or ‘distributed’ journalism can be equally problematic: so when it is not collaborative (when isn’t it exactly? who/what determines that?), it is not journalism? It seems citizen, networked and distributed journalism can all exist side by side and some people could have a lot of fun articulating differences and boundaries.

But…

It seems that the whole point about the current trends in new media, society and the news is that any traditional (modernist) definition is, if anything, up for grabs, continually under debate. What journalism is – that primary sensemaking practice of modernity (John Hartley) – has become permanently impermanent, which process perhaps started as early as the mid-20th century (with its alternative media, pirate radio, and so on)… and new media practices like Backfence, Wikinews or Ohmynews only supercharge and amplify the blurring of the boundaries between journalism and any other form of public communication.

My suggestion, which is built on and partly taken from the work of eminent social theorist Zygmunt Bauman, is to define everything that anyone contributes to the news and/or to the debate on what journalism is as part of a ‘Liquid Journalism’: a journalism whose boundaries have dissolved, that has become fluid, and cannot hold its shape for long…

Under conditions of a liquid journalism, journalists – whether they’d be professional reporters or concerned citizens, Indymedia activists or Fox newsbloggers – ideally open up increasingly diverse and innovative ways of understanding the equally liquid world we are living in. It embraces complexity and flow over redudancy and stability, and encourages interpretation over explanation.

and, as an academic, this also means I/we should engage in liquid journalism studies, that is :-)

El Jefe,

In the last week of March blogger Trent Lapinski and me became aware of the secret ownership of MySpace, and we both started googling, and I sent everything I got on MySPace, Intermix, the venture firms Redpoint and Vantage Point, and MySpace to Trent. Not satisfied with that, though, I got open lines to the Saginaw News and the Kennebec Journal and sent everything to them, and then I addded two friends, one in Panama and one in Michigan, and one sister in Connecticut, to those I was sending the stuff to, and then I added Todd Murphy of the Portland Tribune, a weekly, and offered to dothe same for the Willamette Week outfit.
This was a network of sorts but and alas, my manic enthusiasm over finding something worthwhile to do in retirement vile, was (understandably) shared by all in my little network. A couple of folks shut off the cascade of sometimes incoherent messages, and since I did not even know when something sent got sent,since I had just graduated from an ancient dial-up Mac athat could not talk, I was blithely sending stuff that wasn’t even leaving lovely Hallowell.
It would have been a good idea, practically a platoon of citizens bearing in on a story being overlooked by the lamestreamnewsies, but next time I wisll try to find eight like-minded people who share my zeal, and what wonders could we perform. Say we had a carpenter and a lady and an ex-newspaper hack and, oh, two or three more computer literate types, why I’ll bet we could find out more about where the hell Jimmy Hoffa is that a crack investigative team from the, say, L.A. Times, because we would not be burdened by the jealousies, stupidities, unmerited huge egos, rivalries, brownnoses and childish “hard-nosed” editors, all of whom tend to turn all but the most idealistic cubs into something other than one who is concerned with comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Give me a platoon of guys and gals who will work for nothing to improve matters rather than a bunch of stiff mainly concerned with who gets to go to the next AP conventionin Miami or whos gets sthe page one byline, or the bigger desk. Of course, there are exceptions and I do not wish to be too unfair, but perhaps the time for unfairness has arrived. Al MacLeese, who just walked along the sparkling blue waters of the Kennebec River, and that is calming.

I couldn’t agree more to this notion.

There is a site that already supports this and has been doing so since 2005. http://www.gabbr.com lists stories by the people and by major news media.

The community can post content to all news items to add additional angles and insight to stories. This “keeps the big guys honest” and promotes the “big picture” for many different types of news headlines.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a really, really good blog.

Read plenty of good newspapers though.

And that is how it will always be.

I have an unusal little book called, “It is not the BIG that eat the SMALL … it’s the FAST that eat the SLOW” by Jennings and Haughton, Harper, 2000, that may provide another view to what’s happening in journalism.

Maybe what we are seeing is not about professional vs amateur, or networked, or citizen but about speed.

Blogs, Twitter and other technologies available to contributors allow them to move at a speed that mainstream journalism (mostly) cannot match. Use of these technologies also supports higher accuracy as it is unfettered by editors BUT is peer reviewed instantly by millions.

One component of this speed is certainly the speed with which contributors can dynamically build human networks to achieve a result but in many cases the only network required is simply the WWW; a human network is valuable but the network of the WWW is much faster.

It’s no longer about who you know or where you work, it’s about what you know or can learn and share (publish) quickly and with accuracy, and the credibility that result garners for you.

The best pro journo’s, like Glenn Greenwalf for eample, know this.