Center for Citizen Media

As he explains on his Pressthink blog today, Jay Rosen has taken his biggest step yet into the world he’s been writing about for some time now. With the help of several grants he’s starting NewAssignment.net, based on this notion: “Reporter + smart mob + editor with a fund and backers get the story the press pack wouldn’t, couldn’t or didn’t.”

Needless to say (because I’ve been saying it repeatedly), I’m an enthusiast. I continue to believe that the people who could pull this off best are the traditional media, and that there will soon be some amazing examples. But the media business can’t do everything, and we need to see experiments of this sort.

I’ll be helping Jay as much as I can on this, and hope you’ll participate, too. Maybe your role will simply be reader. Maybe you’ll participate in the journalism. In the new-new media ecosystem we’ll have lots and lots of possibilities.

Give this project a look. It, and other projects of this sort, could become a big deal indeed.

Please use this signup page for next month’s citizen journalism un-conference, to be held August 7 in Cambridge, Mass., at Harvard Law School. It follows directly on Wikimania, which ends the day before.

Please check it out.

Note: We have to keep the numbers fairly low for logistical reasons, so please let us know sooner than later if you’re coming.

The pay was lousy, the bosses showed no loyalty to the workers, etc., etc. Read about it here.

Slate’s Jack Shafer expresses apparent suprise that the Pew survey I mentioned this week shows a distinct minority of bloggers who consider themselves journalists.

Since when was it otherwise?

Harvey Fite’s medium was stone. He worked here with chisels and hammers and pullies and ropes and muscle, and a brain that made sense of a once-abandoned bluestone quarry. He created Opus 40, one of the great works of art of the 20th Century.

As a child growing up nearby in upstate New York, I got to play in this place. This week, taking a couple of days holiday, I came back and re-discovered what an astonishing place it is.

The digital age is a wonderful thing. But the real world of Opus 40 and its like reminds me: What great artists do with their hands is still more powerful than anything we’ve done online, by far.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a new report (260k PDF) on blogging. The organization says, “Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world” — and survey data include these highlights:

• 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere;
• 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30;
• Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%;
• 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others;
• 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.
• When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is “my life and experiences;”
• Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith; and additional smaller groups who focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.

Unfortunately, Pew persists in publishing its surveys only as PDF files, as far as I can discover.

In the first episode of the Center for Citizen Media’s podcast, Lisa Williams of hyperlocal news site H2otown.info talks with Brittney Gilbert, the blogger behind Nashvilleistalking.com. Nashvilleistalking.com is produced by Nashville’s ABC affiliate, WKRN/News 2 and has become the nodal point for Nashville’s local blogosphere:

That’s the whole point of Nashvillistalking — the title of the site is what it’s about. My job is to keep an eye on all of the locally produced blogs and be a human aggregator for what everybody is talking about. We just had a recent death-row execution, and there was a lot of talk about that, both pro and con; I try to do roundups where if you want a good sampling of where poeple are on one issue, you can come to Nashvilleistalking and find something from everybody who’s written about it…I notice that some people even start blogs after having read Nashvilleistalking; they notice that we have a really vibrant online community and they want to participate. Nashvilleistalking is not only a reflection of what bloggers are saying but has also inspired some people to start their own blog.

You can find the file here (MP3).

Lisa Williams: News2/WKRN, Nashville’s ABC affiliate, has a great ongoing experiment called Nashvilleistalking.com, where WKRN blogger Brittney Gilbert rounds up the best of the local blogosphere and beyond each weekday. Each weekend, the station pays $100 to a local blogger to keep the site ticking over Saturday and Sunday. The site’s most recent weekend host was Kevin Barbieux, who blogs at The Homeless Guy. A clip from his blog entry of July 11:

This morning, I was kicked out of McDonalds. Let me tell you what happened. (The McDonalds at 12th and Broadway.) This morning, like most mornings, after leaving the rescue mission I headed up to McDonalds for coffee, a biscuit when I can afford it. And as usual, when I arrive, this McDonalds is not yet open…

Nashville Is Talking’s tagline is: “Operated and maintained by WKRN as part of our ongoing commitment to listen.” Right on to WKRN and Kevin Barbieux for a great weekend of blogging.

Stay tuned for a conversation with Brittney Gilbert in the Center for Citizen Media’s inaugural podcast.

BoingBoing has collected a number of links that strongly suggest India’s government, in the wake of last week’s bombings, is on a broad Internet censorship campaign. It’s bad enough to watch China do this kind of thing, but India is supposed to be a democracy.

The terrorists must be delighted to see such an over-the-top response.

See also this commentary in the Times of India, decrying increasing controls on media there.

Why are collaborative news, commenting and blogging sites such as Newsvine, Slashdot and Global Voices attracting users and visitors? Who are these folks? What do they want from their interactions?

According to a just-released survey — “The Hype vs. Reality vs. What People Value: Emerging Collaborative News Models and the Future of News” — by Hsing Wei (pictured left) from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, they are (among many, many other things):

• mostly young and male, especially those who visit technology-related sites.
• very active in their use of the sites.
• looking for “a fix of unique, informative fun.”
• and “filling in the blanks” left by traditional news sources.
• sharing what they know.
• looking for and finding multiple perspectives.

I was especially intrigued by some of the data about why people participate. From the summary:

Participation is not a simple picture. Of those who did not write, 25% still flagged/tagged/rated content and 13% still contributed to discussion of site’s development. Similarly, of those who neither wrote nor contributed to the site’s discussions on development, 22% still flagged/tagged/rated content.

* For the sake of meaningful sharing. A desire to share knowledge and area of expertise was the top motivator, conveyed by 78.3%. A particular dimension of sharing revealed in the “Other” response option was exposing a larger narrative and set of opinions. Another primary motivation for writing and/or editing was to further action or attention on an important issue, 40.5%. A good number, 29.7% stated they were “professionals with first-hand knowledge that can enhance public information about current issues.” Only a small percentage, 7.9%, mentioned any interest in pursuing journalism.

* Side perk of good company. Confirming earlier observations, the social aspect while not the primary motivation, is still important with 26.3% indicating “finding and connecting to others with similar interest” as a reason for contributing. Within the 13% who specified “Other”, related responses fell into the category of “giving back to the community/helping others”. Although they likely do not think of their intentions in terms of providing a public good, a handful also indicated motivations beneficial to the larger community: a desire to correct, fact check, and/or make articles more clear.

* Individual differences. Writers were more likely then non-writers to be interested in journalism, want to share their expertise, and further action/attention on an important issue or cause. While similar in most motivations, women were more likely then men to express “to find and connect to others with similar interests” (35.8% vs. 25.4%) as a reason for writing and/or editing.

* Impact of the model on the motivators. There was noticeable contrast in motivations on a few dimensions between websites. Most significantly, 68.8% of OhmyNews respondents expressed an interest in pursuing journalism. Global Voices likewise stood out from the average on several dimensions: a high percent of respondents characterized themselves as professions with firsthand knowledge (57.9%), motivated by the potential to find and connect to others with similar interests (42.1%), and further action/attention on an important issue/cause (63.2%).

People running collaborative sites will also find intriguing some of the reasons why visitors didn’t participate, including:

• Busy, No time.
• Hostile atmosphere and low quality conversation.
• Just want to “listen” because I am unqualified.
• Prefer to “listen” for information, not to “teach.”

This is fascinating stuff. Anyone who cares about collaborative online activity, especially in the news category, should take a long look at the survey.
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