It was surprising the other night to hear Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales critique citizen journalism — side by side with a traditional news editor who positively enthused over it.
The two were among several media “influentials” who spoke at the annual Hearst Changing Media Landscape panel organized by online maven Columbia University Journalism School.
Despite the fact that Wales’ Wikimedia Foundation houses the citizen journalism experiment Wikinews, he provided a rather lukewarm endorsement of the concept. Wales suggested, for instance, that because citizen journalists are motivated to write mostly on stories they care about personally, their output is typically commentary or analysis. While that may be useful, he doesn’t see citizen journalists providing the “work-horse reporting” that professional journalists do. And while some kinds of citizen newsgathering can “drive toward objectivity” without being always “biased or inflammatory,” he added, it just won’t replace traditional journalism, with its mechanisms to ensure reporters are not just pushing an agenda.
Hardly a ringing endorsement!
Meanwhile, touting citizen journalism was Albany (N.Y.) Times Union editor Rex Smith, one of the few news chiefs who writes his own online column.
Smith fondly recalled his early days in journalism at a tiny Indiana newspaper 30 years ago. There, one of the paper’s top reads was by a local elderly woman who recounted various social goings-on or a nearby community. That, Smith said, captured the “marrow” of the community in a way that most newspapers today fail to. He said his own paper now plans to embrace citizen journalism — albeit still maintaining strong story-telling efforts and keeping to “core journalistic principles of framing, filtering, mindset.”
While you could argue Smith’s take wasn’t all that far from Wales’, it was oddly pleasing that someone who potentially has so much to lose from the changes hitting traditional newsrooms came off far more optimistically about its promise. As Smith said in speaking of newspaper and online products going forward: “We don’t live in an ‘or’ world, but in an ‘and’ world.”
Now: Anyone care to broaden Wales’ narrow perspective on the potential for citJ?
