E-Media Tidbits

On June 29 in this blog I mentioned Jay Rosen's recent missive, The People Formerly Known as the Audience. That essay is generating considerable online discussion, both in the lengthy thread of comments to Rosen's post and throughout the blogosphere.

Seriously: News pros should be watching and joining this conversation.

One of my favorite contributions to this sprawling discussion was published July 1 in Andrew Cline's blog Rhetorica. See: The audience awakens to play the media game.

First, Cline referenced blogger Jay Manifold's scale of situational citizenship, the upper echelons of which are:

• C3 (high competence, variable commitment): "Young adults; many high-TQ people (techies, most Libertarians); many skeptical Democrats and Republicans."
• C4 (high competence, high commitment): "Many relatively prosperous people; most mainstream Democrats/Republicans; some Libertarians."

Then, Cline observes: "Perhaps these people (who would produce media and consume the media produced by others like themselves) are the C3s and C4s... [Understand, however, that] most Americans are C1s, C2s, and others so apathetic (or made civically lethargic by the fat-n-happy circumstances of our standard of living) that they register nowhere on Manifold's grid. But, then, I think it's a safe bet these are not consumers of news just as they are not voters.

That's a good point. When I talk to people about citizen journalism and other kinds of participatory media, often people who are above the age of 40 or who are print or broadcast media veterans contend, "Well, most people don't care about participatory media, so it doesn't matter. You're talking about a very small world."

...To which I generally respond, "Well, 'most people' would rather watch Wheel of Fortune or Days of Our Lives than World News Tonight. But then, quality journalism is rarely intended for indiscriminate, lowest-common-denominator audiences. Participatory media matters because it's where the most influential part of the mainstream media's audience is increasingly turning, now and in the near future. And the news business does -- and should -- should care very much about the influence it wields, directly and indirectly."

Anyway, Cline concludes:

"Journalism as an institution must embrace the PFKATA and its needs because these are the people (many of them, anyway) who in one way or another rely on the so-called MSM for information of a certain kind. Call it the stuff that custodians of fact practicing a discipline of verification produce and distribute for consumption by C3s and C4s. That's another way of saying that citizen's media is not about to replace institutional journalism. But citizen's media will add to it, will enhance it, will help set agendas, will help correct errors, will help right wrongs, will do a number of things that institutional journalism cannot do because there are so few of them and so many of us."

If you're having trouble keeping straight who "them" and "us" are in Cline's last sentence, don't worry. Hopefully, before too long there will be less division and more cooperation between the two camps. Personally, I think more such blending will enhance the news, overall.