While searching for a citizen journalism site I came across the following more than five years blog of mine. I read through it again and found it relevant. Hence, I am taking liberty to re-blog it. Those who happened to have seen it earlier may please excuse me.
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I had never imagined that I would ever come anywhere near the field of
journalism. Having spent 30-odd years in the government I agreed with the
assertions of many of my colleagues that I had, like them, become practically
“useless” for all purposes. Destiny, however, seemed to have willed something
else for me.
I established base at Bhopal (India) to spend the (post-retirement)
home-stretch. With no pre-occupation and a mind still mercifully agile I
progressively became conscious of my surroundings. The lack or, in many ways,
total absence of civic amenities in this what-could-be-a-beautiful town irked
me. With time available in profusion, I resurrected my Silver Reed portable
typewriter and hammered away to churn out letters to the editors of local
dailies. Some did seem to have impact, a majority did not. From civic issues I
slowly graduated to topical, national and environmental issues and dispatched
my thoughts to national dailies. That venerable newspaper, The Statesman,
highly regarded for its quality of content and language edited by the legendary
CR Irani, would publish them, often, lo and behold, the title of my letter
figuring as the headline for the “Letters” section. My life seemed to have been
made!
Consumed by the obsession to express my views more effectively I took lessons
in computing – along with kids old enough to be my grand-children. The
computer, with its awesome capabilities, made things far easier. Egged on by my
elder brother, I tried my hand at writing articles. Some of them, when
finished, appeared good. Soon enough the City Supplement of the local edition
of Hindustan Times started carrying my pieces, mostly on civic issues. Even
Manuj Features, the erstwhile features agency spawned by the Makhalal
Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, accepted my output and
disseminated them to its subscribers. I had emerged as a casual columnist.
It was nothing intellectual that I wrote. I only gave expression to my
reactions, positive or negative, to issues– local, topical, national or
environmental – as an ordinary individual that I thought needed expression,
generally, with relevant information culled from various sources. It was
neither sycophantic, nor was it in any way “muckraking”. I wrote like a
civic-minded non-professional within the given constraints of limited space
seeking, as Sarah McClendon (1910-2003), the well-regarded American journalist,
once said while claiming to be a citizen journalist, “To give more information
to the people …for their own good”. Unknowingly, more than half a dozen years
ago I, too, had become, somewhat of a “citizen journalist”, a term which, back
then, was still far away from common parlance in this country.
Conceptually speaking, citizen journalism involves, as Shayne Bowman and Chris
Willis, so-called progenitors of “the golden age of journalism” said, in
citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting,
analyzing and disseminating news and information…The intent of this
participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and
relevant information that a democracy requires". Citizen journalism has,
therefore, been variously described as “public” or “participatory” journalism
or even “democratic journalism”.
JD Lasica, a leading authority on “social media” and “user created media”, has broadly classified citizen journalism, inter alia, into (1) Audience Participation: with comments, blogs, photos or video footage, (2) Independent news and information websites: such as consumer reports etc., (3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (4) Contributory and collaborative media sites.
Although the idea that the average citizen could engage in journalistic effort
has a pretty long history yet the professionals, with their training and
corporate resources, seldom yielded any space to amateurs. Avid readers of
newspapers would have noticed the progressively shrinking space for even
readers’ views. And, of course, a non-professional can hardly ever break through
the barrier of professionals who form into a coterie, monopolising news
analyses in the corporate media.
However, with the progressive erosion of trust in the mainstream news-media, public journalism gathered strength. Technology gave fillip to it as an ordinary citizen could capture news and news-worthy incidents with photographs or video footage and distribute
them globally. The journalism that was “by the
people” began to flourish with the emerging internet and networking
technologies. The audience of the conventional media, which so far had been
harangued and sometime misled by partisan considerations, took it upon itself
to report and project more objective news and views. In South Korea, OhmyNews
founded by Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 with the motto "Every
Citizen is a Reporter” became popular and even commercially successful. In this
context mention must also be made of the Independent Media Centre (a.k.a
Indymedia or IMC) that came into existence in 1999 during the anti-WTO protests
at Seattle as a participatory network of journalists that reports on
socio-political issues. Featuring as a milestone in the history of citizen
journalism, Indymedia has pursued open publishing and democratic media process
allowing all and sundry to contribute.
Not yet bound by any law, as perhaps professional journalists are in certain
countries, the citizen journalists, ideally speaking, have to abide by some
basic principles that demand a great degree of rectitude from them. To be
purposeful and effective citizen journalism has got to be so. Hence, accuracy
of facts, thoroughness, fairness of content and comment, transparency – the
principle being “disclose, disclose, disclose” – and independence and
non-partisan proclivities are attributes that generally are desirable and
mostly insisted upon.
Technology having given a kind of head-start, citizen journalism has come a
long way. Growing appreciation of its importance has fostered a mushroom growth
of websites world over inviting and hosting content in the shapes of news,
comments, blogs, photos or videos from the audience. Even the traditional media
organisations – big or small, print or electronic – having gone online, have
staff blogs and also invite audience participation in actual journalism. While
a new phenomenon of “Mojo” – mobile journos – is on the horizon, using fast and
versatile 3G networks, a prospective citizen journo would find umpteen hosts of
his choice on a web-search.
Although a recent phenomenon, citizen journalism websites have become popular
in India. Here, too, as elsewhere, citizen journalism was the result of
“digital era’s democratisation of the media – wide access to powerful, inexpensive
tools of media creation and wide access to what people created, via digital
networks.” While whitedrums.com was launched in 2005, many popular sites like
merinews.com, Mynews.in, Purdafash.com, Rediff.com etc. that came up around the
same time seem to be flourishing. Their role-model being OhmyNews.com, they
generally report on more serious issues like climate change, health topics,
science, politics, environmental or social problems.
Regardless of what the sceptics think citizens’ reportage has gathered nothing
but strength. World over – in the US, Europe, South Africa, Australia and South
Asia – new start-ups are appearing by the day. Yet credibility of the reportage
is what the progress of citizen journalism hinges on. At a conference in Seoul
in 2007, hosted by OhmyNews, the hugely successful citizen journalism medium,
certain preconditions were set forth for user-created content centring on
credibility, trustworthiness, influence and sustainability. Like in traditional
media run by trained professionals, that, perhaps, cannot always be ensured.
Besides, the question that is raised often is whether an ordinary citizen can
be a reporter. Rory O’Connor of Guardian says why not. “After all, I've been a
professional journalist for decades - yet I never took a course in it, received
a license for it or got anointed on high. So here's my advice - if you don't
like the news, report some of your own.”
I have, for the last few months, been doing just that – reporting to OhmyNews,
GroundReport, HumanTimes, merinews, Mynews. The response has been encouraging
and experience rewarding.
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