citizen media

Some Really Cool Links

Great meeting everyone this evening! Here are some links y’all might be interestsed in:

my co-panelist at SXSW, Grace Davis, is holding something called “Woolfcamp” Here’s the wiki. It’s another way we might want to do the get together/conference thing.

From Tom Grubsch in On Line Journalism Review: this piece on Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere: “If there is any general lesson about Bayosphere, it’s that citizen journalism at the community level needs less high-flown rhetoric and more street-smart testing. The model for what works in content remains to be finished. Citizen journalism is not a failure. But there needs to be a more engaged relationship between the proprietors and impresarios of community sites and their contributors, some of whom are news-gathering novices. ”

Also a particularly critical, but very well written, piece from the same guy in OJR here. You’ll have to scroll down for the text.

Here’s Electronic Frontier Foundation for the latest legal updates.

Also the Corante Media Hub where we like to keep a lot of up to date stuff on c.j.

that’s it for the moment! (I think.)
Tish G.

Add comment January 30th, 2006

And Jeff Jarvis has a thing or two to say about conferences

Add comment January 29th, 2006

Dave Winer’s diagram for hypercamp which may be the type of thing Heather’s thinking about.

Add comment January 29th, 2006

Lisa Williams, who writes H2otown is located in Mass. She is considered a very fine citizen journalist, and wrote a piece a short time ago on cj. for Jay Rosen’s PressThink

Lisa wrote a post on what she does for PressThink.

Once we get people in the area together, and if a decision is made to hold a larger conference, Jay Rosen would be another good person to have on the panel. Jay’s a great guy and has a very unique, thoughtful blog. The comments section on Jay’s blog is sometimes as important as the posts that start them off.

Add comment January 29th, 2006

Some stuff about c.j. conferences

One of the most successful, grassroots founded conferences was ConvergeSouth held last fall. Greensboro, NC is on the cutting edge of citizen journalism. I had the pleasure of meetingLex Alexander of the Greensboro News Record . the guy who got c.j. blogs going in Greensboro, at the We Media Conference. (Lex would be a *great* speaker!).

Speakers, though, usually cost money (Lex might come anyway, you never know). There are several well-known bloggers who are out of Harvard who might be willing to come out here–but we might have to discuss their ideologies before making any decisions.

Before we even begin to plan a conference, we need to have an idea what’s being said about citizen journalism, how it’s been talked about, what the arguments are for/against it. On-Line Journalism Review has great articles, although many of them critical of the c.j. movement.

Cyberjournalist.net has some of the best links to the most recent information about citizen journalism that’s out there.

The latest news on c.j. comes out of the National Union of Journalists, who are using the term “witness contributors” Go Here to find a link to their ‘Witness Contributors Code of Practice.”

I got so frustrated at one point with what is/is not citizen journalism that I wrote a piece on it here at Snarkaholic. As it is constituted now, “citizen journalism” and “citizen journalist” are very broad terms and who is using the term often determines what it means.

So, we must be very clear on how we define and use the term “citizen journalist,” lest we get ourselves in a bit too deep. I’m not sure we want to have that sort of heady discussion this monday, but it’s something we can put on the table for another meeting in an area where we can really hash it out.

Looking forward to seeing y’all monday!

3 comments January 28th, 2006

questions on format

A conference format could take many shapes. Should the hierarchy be totally flat, à la Conversation Cafés? A series of informative talks? Simultaneous panel discussions followed by Q&A? Some mix of these?

How long should the conference run?

To how many people should we limit attendance?

3 comments January 25th, 2006

suggestions needed: people

We need ideas for people who are making marks, blazing trails, finding new avenues or simply sharing some wisdom. Email suggestions or post ideas.

Add comment January 25th, 2006

relevant research

There’s a lot of important, relevant information out there to discover about grassroots media and technology issues. What have you run across that you think people should read, learn and discuss?

Add comment January 25th, 2006

need topics

Initial goals for topics include: diversity of subject matter; items of strong interest to participants; reasonable number and scope; satisfying range of depth and breadth. What ideas do you have?

Ideas suggested thus far:

Others?

2 comments January 25th, 2006