Citizen Media Watch

The results of a recent We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows that two thirds of the American respondents think that traditional journalism is “out of touch” with its audience and its needs. This despite the fact that almost half of the respondents use the internet as their primary news source.
There are indeed great challenges ahead for media sites, around the world. I think Nachison is right - quality is the key.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges - or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present. Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news - so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services - and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge - and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

Interesting Washington Post piece on law enforcement in virtual worlds like Second Life or the game World of Warcraft.

Two years ago, Japanese authorities arrested a man for carrying out a series of virtual muggings in another popular game, Lineage II, by using software to beat up and rob characters in the game and then sell the virtual loot for real money.

The key question is whether for instance rape, child abuse, mugging and killing online should be compared to these acts in the real world. And if so, which country’s laws should the crimes fall under.

Philip Rosedale, the founder and chief executive of Linden Labs, said in an interview that Second Life activities should be governed by real-life laws for the time being. He recounted, for example, that his company has called in the FBI several times, most recently this spring to ensure that Second Life’s virtual casinos complied with U.S. law. Federal investigators created their own avatars and toured the site, he said.

In coming months, his company plans to disperse tens of thousands of computer servers from California and Texas to countries around the world in order to improve the site’s performance. Also, he said, this will make activities on those servers subject to laws of the host countries.

I just read Dan Gillmor’s comment on the Where2.0 conference in San Jose, which was all about location, geotagging, mashups etc. Gillmor is wondering why few journalists are there.

I don’t mean reporters who may be covering the conference. No, I’m talking about “database journalists” who use technology to help tell stories better. They should be here because some of the technology being shown here could easily be the basis for some extraordinary community information — if journalists have the common sense to use it.

Mapping and data that can be geo-coded — put into databases that can populate or link to maps — are an enormously powerful tool. It’s mind-boggling to me that more news organizations aren’t taking advantage of the possibilities, or, in most cases, even bothering to learn what’s possible.

Geotagging is opening up great possibilities for journalists. But we need to use these possibilities, learn more about them. Others will.
Wishing I could have gone to Where2.0.

Also wish I could have gone to Reboot. Seems like it was a great success.

Interesting piece by Daniel Terdiman on Cnet about Amanda Congdon’s refusal to live by journalistic rules/standards, even after starting working for ABC News.

there’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on right now in light of revelations that even as she has been producing stories for ABCNews.com, she has also been performing in infomercials for DuPont, one of the largest companies in the world.

Congdon herself mocks or atleast laughs at the whole thing in her blog.

ABC and HBO both approved the DuPont spots. And under the “blogger” title, which is what I am, hello? I am not subject to the “rules” traditional journalists have to follow.

Isn’t that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules? Setting our own? I see nothing wrong with doing commercials, which is what they, quite transparently, are.

I definitely think Terdiman has a point when he sends a bit of advice Congdon’s way:

That attitude is more one of someone intent on being a performer, not a journalist. And while bloggers generally don’t have to answer to anyone except themselves and, to some extent, their readers, Congdon is in a totally unique category: She is a blog-bred personality who has crossed over to the mainstream. If she was video blogging for ABC.com, that would be one thing. But her work appears on the news site, and that makes her part of the news team.

So, while she is a nice person, and seems to have good intentions, I think Congdon may well want to think about whether she wants a future in journalism. If not, then she’s fine. But if she does, she may be burning bridges which she can’t cross again.

More on Amanda Congdon’s career: From Rocketboom to the newsroom

Participants are more active in smaller niche communities than in larger communities with a broader interest. This is shown in the recent resarch results from Communispace, a company that specializes in - surprise, surprise - niche communities.
They write:

In this new era of “conversational marketing”, the measure for engagement in a community isn’t the number of people logging on. Rather, it’s how actively people participate in the community

The study measured frequency of contributions, number of contributions per member and lurker rate among 26 539 members of 66 private online communities.
Private, facilitated communities of around 300-500 members got the most active members, with a lurking percentage of only 14 percent.

In contrast, on public social networking websites, blogs, and message boards, this ratio is typically reversed, i.e., the vast majority of site visitors do not contribute. In fact, in a typical online forum (e.g., wiki, community, message board or blog), one percent of site visitors contribute and the other 99 percent lurk.

The results also indicate the importance of transparency, showing higher activity in branded sites where it is clearly stated who’s behind the community. Communities for parents are the most active among those studied, and communities based on a geographic location got high levels of participation too.
These results are not surprising - the more “social glue”, the more engaging a community is. What was a little interesting to see though, was that same-sex communities get more participation than mixed-sex ones.

The white paper will soon be available in its entirety at http://www.communispace.com/3_news/perspectives.asp

Current TV, the interactive tv network founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt in 2005, has now launched its UK version. With air time on both Sky and Virgin Media platforms in the UK and Ireland, the channel can add 10 million homes covered to its 40 million in the US.
Company chairman Al Gore explained to the Associated Press what he sees as the thing that sets Current TV apart from other channels.

Gore said Current TV was designed – to democratize the medium of television and open it up to voices, so people can join the global conversation.
Mainstream television, he says, is a one-way conduit, and – a conversation that shuts out individuals begins to get a bit stale.
Gore and his co-founder Joel Hyatt bill Current TV as – television for the Internet generation of tech-savvy 18-to-34 year olds who demand interactivity and, it seems, have short attention spans.

In connection with the launch, Current TV announced a contest where three winners get to have lunch with Al Gore in London. It’s about shooting what Current TV calls a pod - a 3-5 minute ”non-fiction video that tells a story, profiles a character or place, and/or shares an idea” - and uploading it to the current.tv site.

A third of the content on Current TV is made up by pods like this. The content is very segmented - here’s a sample hour:

As you can see, Current TV also partners with Google. And they’ve put extra effort into making people with a background in journalism contribute to the site and tv channel through its Current Journalism program.

”Welcome to UK and Ireland”, writes US current.tv blogger Amanda Zee, who reports that the UK team has been working hard to make the launch.

I’ve only been over here for four days, but the team at Current UK has been working toward this for months, seemingly non-stop. No matter what time I’ve been in the San Francisco office, there’s always someone in the London one available to answer questions — and if you do the time-zone math, you’ll know just how crazy that is. Hopefully now they’ll have a chance to enjoy what they’ve made.

Urban Lindstedt writes about Borders book club, and community building at the book store chain. They collaborate with gather.com, a topics based community service where participants rate others’ contributions and earn points from writing popular posts or inviting more people.
Like Lindstedt writes, the content of the book club is rather limited. So far it has 129 members, which is even less than I have on my slumbering mailing list on creative writing in Swedish, but I guess it’s at an early stage.

What I like about it is that Borders set out to facilitate discussions around the books they sell, and you can reserve the upcoming book club books online and get 20 percent off at your local Borders book store. Each month four new books are presented, and at the Gather book club community the author of each book writes a piece about it, which the members can comment on and discuss with him or her. There are also reading guides available for the books.

Book club visitors are also encouraged to start their own book clubs - either on Gather for online discussions, or in real life - where they can discuss books of their own choosing.

The Institute for Interactive Journalism, J-Lab, has released a lenthy study on hyperlocal citizen media and its sustainability over time. In a news release, J-Lab writes:

Most citizen media ventures are shoestring labors of love, funded out of the founders’ own pockets, and staffed by volunteer content contributors. While they’d like more readers and revenues, site founders nevertheless professed a solid resolve to continue: 51% said they didn’t need to make money to keep going; 82% said they planned to continue “indefinitely.” Nearly all would welcome reinforcements and the ability to make even token payments to writers.

“While not all individual sites will continue to operate, we project that the phenomenon of citizen media will be sustainable, with new sites coming online in serial fashion to replace those that collapse as their founders burn out,” Schaffer said.

73 percent of 500 citizens who participated in the survey think of their sites as a success. Shaffer in the quote above is Jan Schaffer, J-Lab’s Executive Director.

Read more:
The full report at Knight Citizen News Network

(via Center for Citizen Media)

What is a bribe, what is a gift and what is doing a friend a favour? What is acceptable to accept from people who might want to influence your blogging?

A post by Media Culpa’s Hans Kullin makes it perfectly clear that bloggers are not journalists: Swedish bloggers can be bought for a lottery ticket

The story is that a site selling underwear has asked a number of Swedish bloggers to link to it, in return for a Triss lottery ticket (worth around 3 dollars). Lo and behold, many of them did. Hans Kullin ponders:

I can see that bloggers might be tempted to earn a quick buck by simply posting a link on their blog and as long as they are candid about the circumstances, there’s no real problem, right? A little surprising is when people who are in an official position, like being a member of the local council, allow their blog to become a marketing channel for underwear. But that’s their choice. What is more difficult to digest is when the payback part of the deal is not disclosed or when bloggers simply lie about the whole arrangement.

No, bloggers are not journalists. They would never be bought… that cheap. ;-)

In the States, though, it’s not about lottery tickets. No, the blogger ethics issue is on a whole new level. I guess it’s been hard to miss the debate around Microsoft/Edelman sending out brand new state of the art Acer “Ferrari” laptops, with Microsoft Vista installed, to bloggers, “no strings attached”. The US blogosphere is divided on this issue. While some think it’s great that bloggers finally get some recognition for their hard work, others say the can no longer trust the bloggers who received these laptops. In the end, it looks like the whole thing turned for Microsoft. Lots of bad pr.

The key issue for bloggers is disclosure. The lesson learnt is this: if you receive something for free because you are a blogger, write about it straight away in your blog.
And, I’d like to add, consider the possibility of returning the gift if you have a gut feeling it’s not right and that it might cloud your judgement or that the suspicion might arise that your judgement has been clouded.
Just a piece of friendly advice.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community building, and how to deal with abusive comments or blog posts. I’ve argued that it’s important to be visible in the forums and blogs yourself, as editor/blog host/forum host. That is the best and only way to gain understanding for sometimes removing content. A dialogue. And mutual respect.

As Readers’ Editor, I try to participate as much as I can in Aftonbladet’s forums, but I often lack time, which I strongly regret. Instead, most often my contact with the forum users are via email when something’s gone wrong.
Sigge Eklund, Aftonbladet’s blog manager, works closely with the bloggers and uses his blog Bloggvärldsbloggen to keep them updated with news both about our blogging tool and things happening in the Aftonbladet blogging community and in the blogosphere in general.

Following the reported problems with the reader comments at AZ Starnet and at the Sun-Sentinel, and also Yahoo shutting down its Yahoo News message boards because they got dominated by “a small number of vocal users”, I was happy to find a US blog host who is doing exactly what I asked for in my post about AZ Starnet.

Jason Sperber is community manager for the citizen blogs at Bakersfield.com. In a recent post on his blog there he is very clear about what’s okay and what’s not in blog posts and comments at the Bakersfield citizen blogs, and why.

I’ve got some stuff to say that some of you aren’t going to like very much.

First off, let’s stop with the namecalling. No more calling each other “idiot” or “stupid,” or worse, in lieu of an argument. No more twisting folks’ names or blog handles into vulgar parodies. If you can’t make your point or defend your argument without resorting to base namecalling, then there are plenty of places for you to play, but this isn’t one of them. You detract from any point you’re trying to make when you go there, and we’re tired of it.

Spurious speculations about posters’ private lives are not welcome. Insults based on assumptions about individuals’ identities or parts of their private lives are not welcome. Again, argue your point, use sarcasm and humor and satire to underscore your argument and undercut that of your opponents, but don’t attack the person you’re arguing with. And if you’re on the receiving end of such an attack, that is not license to fight fire with fire.

By now, some of you have already assumed that I’m talking about or to you. Know this—if this doesn’t apply to you, then it doesn’t apply to you, and you don’t need to get defensive. But if it does, no matter what your political or ideological or religious beliefs, no matter how you identify yourself, I am talking to you. “He started it,” “I’m just defending myself”—these excuses don’t wash. Be the better person, walk away, ignore, and report. Don’t lower yourself.

Do read all of the post, and the user comments. It sets a good example.

Admittedly, being host for a blogging community is not exactly the same as being host for a forum. In my experience, bloggers often take more care to be civilized since they have the reputation of their own blog to think about, and also they are often volunteering more personal information than forum users.