On July 13th, the Social Media Club Los Angeles hosted a special panel discussion on this subject with speakers including:
- Alexia Tsotsis - Tech/business lifestyle reporter for the LAWeekly
- David Sarno - Los Angeles Times Internet business reporter
- Christina Gagnier - Communications strategist and information broker, with a strong nonprofit background
- Andy Sternberg - Live Earth interactive director; news editor at LAist.com
- Chris Tolles - CEO of Topix
The following are my notes from which I’ve recorded to the best of my ability, combined with my personal thoughts:
On Citizen Journalism
David: Citizen journalism has lots of future potential. Big skills needed are: getting the story/process right, verification, sense of intuition, who to trust. These take time and patience to develop.
Andy: Accuracy is paramount, otherwise credibility is lost. One can’t jump to conclusions in details.
Chris: Massive amounts of information and stories are being made available on a faster basis as events suddenly happen. With this rapidity you have a variety of participants: professionals, amateurs, truthtellers, liars, spinners, propagandists.
Effects on News Consumption and Interpretation
Chris: Transitioned use to newsfeeds, aggregators, blogs, and social media. Understood to be publishing & promotional engines.
David: Greater monitoring of citizen journalism and social media for sentiment analysis. How are content creators, distribution intermediaries, feeling about the story? How are they reacting? Twitter is a great tool for that through keyword searches.
Andy: Instantaneous opportunity to check what the grapevine is saying about a rumor, feeling, event, etc. Ex: earthquakes. As an editor, rules haven’t changed much. Having at least two credible sources still important. Rules matter, but in these times there’s a feeling of wanting to scoop a story first, because others are doing so too. However, this leads to increased number of unconfirmed reports. There’s a definite need to have stories right versus having them first.
Christina: Social media helps intensely spread information. However, Twitter is still only used by a very small number of people. [She references story on especially low use by Milennials of ages 16-24]. Note: See Times.co.uk article on 15yr. old Morgan Stanley intern who wrote work essay on How Teenagers Consume Media, and subsequent findings frenzy.
David: Let’s look at this from the perspective of journalism education. Technology is moving so fast and these trends are so quickly happening, they’re not being taught in schools. Many journalists and students aren’t getting the requisite skills to understand and adapt with the changing nature of the information production, dissemination, and consumption. It’s only to their career benefit if they do, at least from a risk mitigation standpoint.
Chris: Teens and Twitter isn’t important. For young adults though, Twitter is a great networking and promotional tool.
Role of Investigative Journalism
Chris: It’s competing with the masses. Twitter is awesome, but it’s a giant mess! In journalism, narrative creation is highly important and valuable. Curation! Aggregation tools can help in the process.
Andy: Even though I’m a big fan of Twitter, I see it playing a small part in a larger holistic future of how investigative journalism is created, distributed, and consumed. 90% of the work is just getting out there and doing it. Monitoring, notes, verification, telephone calls, elaboration, editing. For simply capturing a potential story, always have a camera with you. Do some basic writing, tag the article, and send it out. Twitter is great as a resource and a conversational search engine.
Guidelines for Journalism
Alexia: Reuters Handbook for Journalism; quote from therein, “Always hold accuracy sacrosanct.”
Chris: Depends on who you’re reporting for.
David: Verifiability. Take the Iran situation as an example of where information was coming from all directions. Make sure that the next person receiving your accounts/story can verify it as well, that way you’re also helping the next person(s) down the line. Makes dispersion frictionless.
Christina: Neiman Journalism Lab, Knight Foundation’s ProPublica, and nonprofit sector as legitimizers.
Audience Member, Serena: Society of Professional Journalists.
Andy: Resources are great. A developing question is what is appropriate and acceptable. Self-policing of journalistic quality is in effect. Rules are being made as we go along. Influencers like Jeff Jarvis, among many others, are giving guidelines.
Changing Landscape and the Future
Chris: Online classifieds were what paved the way for the killing of one of print news’ big revenue streams. No way that Craig’s List can be put back in the box.
David: Business model transformation though content licensing, affiliation, partnerships, freemium options. A simple fact is that the web is not good for reading extended copy because screens can become straining on the eyes. Print and electronic readers like the Kindle make that much easier on the user.
Citizen Journalism’s Effect on Attention Span and Willingness to Read Extended Stories
David: It’s variable. There’s lot of room to continually create longer stories people will read.
Andy: Conciseness and leading (as opposed to burying the lead), are becoming increasingly important to keep readers’ attention and interest.
Role of the Press Release: Is the traditional format and distribution dead?
Andy: I’m not actively looking for them. There’s many channels through which they’re being dispersed and come across by chance through social media, other news media providers, and especially aggregators (ex: Google News). Of course, they’re continually coming into our email inboxes. The quality of those continued vary in terms of relevancy, good headlines, interesting story, embodied respect for editor’s time.
Christina: Personal interaction is still very important; ex: personalized initial/followup emails and phone calls.
Chris: The content of the release is what matters.
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