Here at Little Scraps of Paper, we're not quite ready to live blog events so, here instead is the transcription of the notes I scribbled on the back of my MetroNorth train schedule during Dan Gillmor's "Trends in New Media" lecture last night at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. This is a bit of a (perhaps not) quick (enough) notes dump. (All parentheticals and sentences containing "I" or "me" are my own thoughts):
J-School Dean of Students and new media guru Sree Sreenivasan described the old media/new media "sides" of the profession and then introduced Dan as someone who "created his own side."
Background
For those who aren't familiar with Dan Gillmor, he worked as a reporter at papers in Detroit, Kansas City, and Vermont before heading to the San Jose Mercury News where he covered technology "in the belly of the beast," as he described it, and was one of the paper's most prominent columnists.
I worked at The Merc's (neighboring little, non-union) sister paper, The Contra Costa Times, during the dot-com boom and even for a government reporter like me who had only a passing interest in tech, his column was a must read for understanding what was happening in that particular time and place.
Dan left the Merc to start Bayosphere, a Bay Area citizen journalism experiment which didn't work out quite as Dan had hoped. It's now part of the Backfence network and Dan has founded the Center for Citizen Media at UC Berkeley's J-School and Harvard Law's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Dan's talk
Dan started off by regretting that the lectern would get in the way of a real conversation, but it was billed as a lecture after all. (Also as part of the Hearst New Media Programs, there was a panel discussion last November including Craig Newmark and many other interesting folks).
Speaking of lectures...he said that the time of journalism as a lecture broadcast to a passive audience --"the people I call the former audience"-- is closing, to be replaced by the news story not as the end of the discussion, but only the beginning or middle. He admitted that "the implications are a little bit scary to me."
Earlier, he said that all these changes are "gonna be confusing and messy, but also a lot of fun."
Mentioned the recent news that McClatchy, which is buying Knight Ridder, will turn around and sell the Merc and the Coco Times, among others, to Dean Singleton's MediaNews. (MediaNews is infamous in Bay Area media circles for bare-boned operation of its Alameda News Group, including Oakland Tribune and a bunch of mostly East Bay dailies ).
Even before this news, The Merc and others are "tarnished institutions," but sale will have journos there "yearning for Darth Ridder," not-so-affectionate nickname for KR boss Tony Ridder.
Talked of Creative Destruction that's roiling the media business.
Heart of the lecture
Dan proposes abandoning the kind of capital "O" Objectivity that would have reporters call Neo-Nazis for comment on a story about the Holocaust. In its place, would be a set of core principals that would be aided by technology:
- Thoroughness - let people (readers, etc.) fill in the gaps of what pro journos don't know; link to reference and source material, even stuff that challenges your story. Make journalism more about being a guide than an oracle. Authority of guide increases the more and better sources they point to (courtesy of the hyperlink). Quotes Dave Winer as saying that if you send people away (to good places), they'll come back.
- Accuracy - possibilities include the strikethrough tag, like bloggers use, to show what was corrected; the AP's write throughs that go on the wires; Wikipedia model would address concerns about the historical record.
- Independence - Fully disclose any potential conflicts of interest on part of individual and the institution.
- Fairness - Be fair, but also write what's true and if the weight of facts are on one side, say so.
- Transparency - Again, disclosure and show people where and how you got your info.
Dan had mentioned that he doesn't consider himself a journalist anymore, someone asked why. He said that he is/will be asking big tech cos. for money for CitMedia and has investments in start-ups and so can't cover any of these things. But he did say, "I will commit some journalism from time to time."
Dan talked quite a bit about net neutrality, saying if we think media consolidation has been cause for concern up til now, wait and see what happens if greedy, control-freak cable and phone cos. get to run a tiered internet. Says innovation happens at the edge and that's what will suffer under the plan. Said Microsoft was in unusual spot in being on the side of the angels in this one, but that they and others who support neutraility are doing a lousy job of lobbying in Washington, DC.
A J-school student thanked him for raising the issue, mentioned that she had brought it up in a class and urged colleagues to sign petition for net neutrality but that professor said journos shouldn't sign petitions, should stay neutral. This cracked me up. I remember the orthodoxy of the school in this regard (I graduated in '97). Profs telling you not to vote to preserve objectivity. This goes back to Dan's example of the Neo-Nazis. It's a patronizing obsession with the "appearance" of objectivity that too often masks lazy, he-said/she-said reporting while the real story goes untold.
Trevor Butterworth said he agreed with Dan more than he thought he would, but took issue with his glorious portrayal of citizen media as the great democratizer of information. Brought up example of RFK Jr.'s pieces in Salon and Rolling Stone on dangers of mercury preservatives in kids vaccines that was refuted by credible science blogs, but that those blogs and others were drown out by the Huffington Post and others that took up RFK's issue. Trevor said there is a hierarchy in the blogosphere and asked what prevents the kind of populist media that a Goebels or Trotsky would love?
Dan said he wasn't sure of the facts in the case and would take Trevor's account at face value. (There's more to this, but that's for another post) Said he's not looking for "instant perfection" in citizen media, but that he saw a small victory in Trevor's story because at least he and likely many others did find information that challenged a main stream story, info. they might not have found in the past. Trevor completely disagreed.
Final word
In speaking briefly with Dan afterward he mentioned that he had wanted to mention Beyond Broadcast taking place in Cambridge, Mass. next month.
BTW: several attendees said they got word of the talk through Fred's blog. Cool to see the cross-pollination of interests.
Tags: [Dan Gillmor] [Citizen Media] [Columbia Journalism]
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