The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged

Is the idea of networked journalism really so different? Has it not always been the case that “professional journalists” have sought to maintain a set of contacts in their given specialism? Have these contacts not always informed the journalist's reports as either source, specialist or outspoken viewer? Sure the internet has made this process more fluid and we now have an instant means of reply, (which we did not have before) our networks of contacts are now bigger, more global, but it’s still just people that are typing those tweets to you.

Fact is that journalist have always needed participation of other people in order to report news. We have always needed to know how houses were blown away; what it felt like to lose a son or where those pesky kids really went in their bus at the weekends. We’ve also always had the means to listen back through the traditional means of communication.

So what’s changed? Well the speed with which all these stages can take place seems to be a key factor. We are writing news not history here, by the time the mail bags get heavy enough with reaction a story may well have run it’s course. In the net age however people demand up to the minute information and so we need to give them up to the minute reporting. One of the only ways to do this is to have big, mobile, communicative networks of people. This means the information more and more has to come from those individuals with the shortest time lag between them and events. That, more often than not, is the public. Consumers demand it and so journalists must supply it, this much is clear.

Not so clear however is how, if at all, the public should be involved in the editorial process. Do they decide what they want to see. Well I’m fairly sure they do this already, by not reading the stuff they don’t want to. Could they suggest story ideas, like on spot.us? I’m pretty sure they already do that as well, isn’t that what comments sections are for? If journalists just aren’t paying attention that’s a different matter. They already write up their own stories on blogs, so what is the role of the professional in this exchange?

It seems professionals are destined to be the dispensers of the seal of approval or the teachers in a new age of journalism as a collaborative classroom. Our role is to facilitate the telling of people’s stories in an accurate, articulate and informed way. That to me doesn’t sound far from what has been going on for years, it’s just we may not always be doing the telling anymore.