Center for Citizen Media

On the Wall Street Journal site, Jason Calacanis (co-founder of Weblogs Inc.) and Alan Meckler (CEO of Jupitermedia Inc.) debate a topic on more and more minds: “Can Bloggers Make Money?“

Ambush TV calls itself

the newest and most aggressive effort yet to provide citizens with cutting-edge tools to hold Congress and other national officials accountable to the people. Forget the media. This is all about wedia – people like you and me taking control to draw the attention of elected officials and the public to the real priorities of this nation’s people.

Let’s see where this one goes. It’s an interesting idea.

I’m currently at the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace conference in Manila, Philippines, with other prominent folks from the blogsphere, like Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan Zuckerman, Jeff Ooi and Isaac Mao. You can check out the conference blog for a rundown of presentations on “Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia in Manila to share experiences and discuss needs, threats, trends, and issues of ethics and the emerging roles and responsibilities of bloggers, podcasters and the alternative online media.”

Myself – I’ll be talking about blogging and podcasting in China, and also wikis and online collaboration.

Weblogs Inc. has launched Blogging Ohio, which looks to be the first of many such sites.

Meanwhile, my old citizen-media project, Bayosphere, is now part of Backfence. (See disclosures page.)

The Beyond Broadcast gathering will take place on May 12-13 in Cambridge, Mass. It’s not expensive, and we’re assembling a terrific group of folks.

Here is the registration page.

The University of Maryland’s J-Lab has announced its latest grantees for some very cool projects that include: “environmental news in the Great Lakes, communities in rural Alaska and inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia,” among others. We should watch them all with interest.

NY Times: TV Networks Sue to Challenge F.C.C.’s Indecency Penalties. With no allies among either the Democrats or the Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission nor any significant ones in Congress, the four broadcast networks, joined by the Hearst-Argyle Television group of stations, embarked late last week on a low-risk strategy of turning to the courts.

Astonishing — no allies among members of Congress who are supposed to uphold the Constitution. It’s a commentary on today’s America that we have to rely on the courts, and ultimately the rest of us, to protect the First Amendment from the blue-noses who want to make the airwaves suitable only for small children.

The Smithsonian Institution is a museum complex that has been called our national attic, and it is one of the great treasures of American history and life. But in an outrageous deal with a private media company, the Smithsonian has moved down a path that would privatize a vital part of our national cultural commons.

As Carl Malamud, a fellow at the center, writes today:

On March 9, 2006, the Smithsonian Institution entered into a joint venture with Showtime Networks to create a new video-on-demand channel called “Smithsonian On Demand.” The new service has the right of first refusal on any access to Smithsonian collections and staff. For example, if Ken Burns wishes to make a movie that makes “non-incidental use” of the Smithsonian archives or involves “non-incidental” access to staff, he could not offer his movie to PBS. Instead, he would have to offer it to the new venture.

In response to this agreement, 215 concerned citizens have written to the Smithsonian expressing their concern. This letter was delivered to the Smithsonian Institution on April 17, 2006, with copies to 28 U.S. Senators and 23 U.S. Congressmen who have oversight over the Institution.

The center also filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the deal, the operating terms of which are being kept secret from American taxpayers — another flagrant violation of the public trust.

CItizen media depends in significant part on our collective and individual ability to mine the riches of our historical and cultural heritage — an essential piece of which resides in the Smithsonian’s many collections — to create new works. Our history should not be for sale to one bidder, or so restricted in use that one greedy media company can control what is ours as a nation, not theirs as a private fief.

I’ve signed the letter to the head of the Smithsonian, as have many other concerned people in a variety of fields. Will the institution and Congress do the right thing? Stay tuned.

Bertrand Pecquerie, in a guess blog posting on CBSNews.com (I’m doing one later this week), sums up:

In the U.S., people blog but they don’t vote. Virtual democracy doesn’t seem to have any affect on real democracy. In Europe, we vote (last week’s elections in Italy, for instance, had an 83% voter turnout), but we blog in the political sense very little. Which democracy is the most vibrant?

So, for the second week out of three, CBSNews.com is featuring a piece (here’s the other, and my response) that questions the foundation of the emerging genre we call citizen journalism. In both cases, representatives of the traditional Fourth Estate are doubting the usefulness of the Fifth Estate of bloggers and others who don’t fit into the neat boundaries of the professional class of journalists. In both cases, they raise interesting questions that devolve into straw-men attacks.

Bertrand’s equation above — more blogging=less democracy — is laughably spurious. I mean, the old East Germany had 99.999 percent turnout and not an ounce of officially permitted independent thinking: Now there was a democracy, right?

Professional journalism does not gain credibility by casting stones at the bottom-up media, which definitely can use some improvement as it veers into journalism but is not trying — at least not in my view of things — to replace the traditional media.

Pecquerie suggests that citizen media is just another bubble. By what standard? Does he truly think that people, having discovered their ability to voice their concerns and pass along their knowledge to neighbors and others of like interests, will suddenly decide to shut up? I do not.

I agree, in part, with some of his critiques of U.S. media in the run-up to the Iraq war. It is almost beyond question that the American press failed as a whole — with some honorable exceptions — in its solemn duty to question authority on behalf of the public. But that has nothing whatever to do with citizen journalism; it was a failing of big institutions all on their own. They didn’t need anyone’s help.

• See also Jeff Jarvis’ response (he and I are Pecquerie’s joint targets in the citizen media world).

I’ll be giving the third in a series of talks/conversations — this time will be much more in the seminar style than the previous events — at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It’ll be Wednesday evening at the center, starting at 7 p.m. There will be beverages and dessert-type munchies.

If you want to come, please RSVP to Erica George at egeorge@cyber.law.harvard.edu