Jay Rosen is asking Webcred conference participants what concepts had the most impact on us. He will put it all together at Pressthink. This prompted me to refine the thinking I spewed into my last blog post. Here was my response:
One mind change and two epiphanies:
Mind change: Jimmy Wales blew me away. I use wikipedia, know some wikipedians, and am familiar with wikinews and the controversies surrounding its start. But like Ethan I thought that we were moving towards a world of "blogs vs. wikis" and "transparency vs. NPOV". I have argued in the past that NPOV is impossible and /particularly /undesirable for citizens' journalism. If people have other dayjobs, and especially if they work for advocacy organizations or government offices, their conflicts of interest and biases would be even more important to disclose than those of professional journalists. But after listening to Jimbo, I realize that saying "it can't be done" would be like scoffing at Ted Turner's idea of a 24-hour TV news network. Now I think: "it just might be possible." I don't know how. But now I realize that's ok, thanks to my first epiphany...
Epiphany #1: Also thanks to Jimmy Wales. In cyberspace, brilliant ideas no longer need clear plans to create something revolutionary. Your community organically takes your idea and runs with it, shaping it into whatever they need that they don't already have. Craigslist is another excellent (and profitable) example of this, though Craig isn't doing news - yet. (I'm betting he will.) This kind of approach to media innovation doesn't strike me as very appealing, however, to corporate boards and shareholders of companies that own news organizations. Which is why the future belongs outside of corporate concentrated media (call it CCM for short.. ;-)).
Epiphany #2: I agree with many of you. Free access to archived news content is key. I won't rehash the excellent arguments already made by other people in this email thread. But I will add: This is an issue on which our group is well positioned to do some valuable, concrete work. Bill Mitchell's initial digging is just one example. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think many news executives know much if anything about Creative Commons. (The ones I worked for didn't.) From my own experience in the news biz, copyright law is viewed by most journalists and news editors as gospel, unchangeable, handed down by God. But the truth is, the best work of journalists has much less impact than it potentially could thanks to existing intellectual property regimes. Thus news organizations are losing a major opportunity to bank important long-term capital: credibility with the public. If we hold another conference I would suggest focusing on this issue. I would also suggest some serious collaborative projects looking at how or whether news companies can make money while freeing their archived content.
...now I really have to go pack...
Comments