New Directions for News (which recently
announced that it is merging with the American Press Institute) has released a lengthy report titled "We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information." (It's available
here in PDF format and is promised to be posted
here in HTML within a week.) Written by
Shane Bowman and
Chris Willis of
Hypergene Media Solutions (and edited by
J.D. Lasica), it is the best overview to date of the various audience and media trends that the authors call "participatory journalism." I don't find anything truly new in the report's 60+ pages, but it ties together a number of threads into a coherent call to action for both media companies and average citizens.
"Armed with easy-to-use web publishing tools, always-on connections, and increasingly powerful mobile devices, the online audience has the means to become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information," the report says. This can be viewed as a threat, but the authors clearly don't see it that way. (Neither do I.) The most interesting example I found in the report: Korea's OhmyNews.com, an online publication produced with the help of 26,000 registered "citizen journalists" who can actually earn money for their work. (For more on OhmyNews, check out
this article.)
The
last chapter has some good advice for media organizations on how to take advantage of the "We Media" phenomenon. It also has an excellent
bibliography. Two final points: (1) the report would benefit from one more round of copy editing to eliminate some nagging (to me) typos and style issues; (2) keep an eye out for an upcoming
book from
Dan Gillmor, who has led the way in getting "
We Media" on journalists' radar screens.
