Monday, January 16, 2006
Got Narrative? If Not, Citizen Journalism Might Help
This week, the Denver-area free weekly paper
Westword ran a poignant
column about the value of long-form narrative journalism. See "
Storytime:
The dailies are looking for characters," by
Michael
Roberts. From the article:
"Rocky Mountain News editor/publisher/president John Temple echoes many
of [Denver Post editor Greg] Moore's views, particularly when it comes to finding scribes with the
chops for narrative journalism. 'Long-form writing is something that most
journalists are not trained for or skilled at,' he says. 'Some people are
incredible reporters but weaker writers, and some are great storytellers but
not great hard-news beat reporters.'"
On Friday, in
Journalism Hope, blogger
K. Paul Mallasch expands the
issues raised in the
Westword article in an intriguing direction. See "
Why There Isn't More Narrative
Journalism in Newspapers and How CitJ Can Help." There, he wrote:
"I immediately thought about how citizen journalism could possibly help with
the lack of immersion journalism and/or literary journalism in the world
today. ... With citizen journalists covering something that interests them
and a little help from trained journalists, these types of stories could be
done, and done well online. You need a big enough audience contributing,
though, because one person can't do it alone month after month without
compensation. (There's that compensation thing again...) The community, the
voice of the people, could pick out what warrants a look at and take the
time to do the stories."
... OK, I know, it's pie-in-the-sky, and there's that ever-present
signal-to-noise issue with any kind of contributed content, but still I
think he's onto something worth considering. Citizen journalists could
collaborate with, or otherwise aid, mainstream journalists for more
difficult projects. Worth a try, I think.
E-mail this item |
Add/View Feedback (3) |
QuickLink this item: A95198
E-Media Tidbits Archive
MAIN
|
Back to Top
