The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
All the world’s a newsroom and all the people merely reporters
: Debbie Galant’s Baristanet turns neighbors into reporters when fires break out. She reports in an email:
I was alerted to the event by readers, who then started feeding me pictures and other details. It was like being a rewrite man at a big paper. Five or six different readers (most whom I’d never heard of, or from) participated. The e-mails just kept coming.
Hyperlocal power!
Portg
We activated a Hammock Publishing company blog (blog.hammock.com) before Christmas but weren’t going to officially “launch” it until yesterday. Then, last week, during our “vacation week,” a fire broke out at the historic church one of our editors attends. We turned the blog over to him for some incredibly moving hyperlocal blogging and photo blogging. I was thinking of you, Jeff.
Thanks for this post. It is a great example of the potential of grassroots, participatory journalism. At the Northwest Voice and other places, the majority of the submissions are extremely pedestrian. They cover birthdays, anniversaries, PTA fundraisers, etc. But there is a great potential for this type of journalism to cover larger-scale, more significant events when suddenly everyone becomes a reporter. I have a professor who likes to think about the day when police go to fire on a group of non-violent protesters and they’re faced with a wall of camera and video phones, which can transmit incriminating evidence across the world instantaneously. Obviously, the technology (and the people who use it) have a tremendous opportunity to take hold of real power, possibly even beyond what we can imagine now.
And it wasn’t until I smelled the smoke, and felt my dog locking his jaws around my ankle and dragging my ExecuBlogger leather chair across the room that I realized that it was *my* house everyone was emailing me about! There’s a story in there somewhere, I can feel it… ;)
Jeff, I know this is an OT link-whore, but I thought I would bring this issue to your attention:
Congress Suppressing Congression Research Service Reports
It seems like something that requires a good dose of old-fashioned Jarvisian outrage.
I’ve been trying to nudge Philly Future http://www.phillyfuture.org in a direction similar to this, with more independant bloggers. But it’s hard to find volunteers for the site. I don’t have the personal resources to do it all by myself. If you know of any, pass them on – please!