HERE COMES 'WE MEDIA'
Tech-Savvy
Readers Want In on the Conversation
BY
DAN GILLMOR
In 1999, Jane’s Intelligence
Review, the journal widely followed in national security circles,
wondered whether it was on the right track with an article about
computer security and cyberterrorism. The editors went straight
to some experts — the denizens of Slashdot, a tech-oriented
Web site — and published a draft. In hundreds of postings
on the site’s message system, the technically adept members
of that community promptly tore apart the draft and gave, often
in colorful language, a variety of perspectives and suggestions.
Jane’s went back to the drawing board, and rewrote the article
from scratch. The community had helped create something, and Jane’s
gratefully noted the contribution in the article it ultimately
published.
The episode demonstrates something that many journalists have
yet to discover: in an emerging era of multidirectional, digital
communications, the audience can be an integral part of the process.
Call it “We Media.” Journalism is evolving away from
its lecture mode — here’s the news, and you buy it or
you don’t — to include a conversation.
Interactive technology — and the mostly young readers and
viewers who use and understand it — are the catalysts. We
Media augments traditional methods with new and yet-to-be invented
collaboration tools ranging from e-mail to Web logs to digital
video to peer-to-peer systems. But it boils down to something
simple: our readers collectively know more than we do, and they
don’t have to settle for half-baked coverage when they can
come into the kitchen themselves. This is not a threat. It is
an opportunity. And the evolution of We Media will oblige us all
to adapt.
For one thing, the people and institutions we cover are learning
new tricks to get out their own message — and they ultimately
will force us to be more accurate and nuanced in our reporting.
Why? Because transparency goes both ways. Just ask Bob Woodward
and Dan Balz of The Washington Post, who interviewed Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld on January 9, 2002. Soon after the Post ran a
series of articles on events in the aftermath of the September
11 attacks, the Defense Department posted a transcript of the
entire interview on the DefenseLink Web site (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/
Feb2002/t02052002_t0109wp.html). Reading the entire interview
illuminates how well prepared the reporters were, and how they
went about their task. Whether it’s to add context or to
counter misrepresentations, this is a practice more public officials
— and well-known people generally — will undoubtedly
take up.
Some of the audience will jump in with both feet, meanwhile, to
be journalists themselves or help shape what journalists do. Others
will simply want better information. Traditional journalism organizations
should be helping the former audience become part of the process.
In my own case, I’ve found that my readers definitely know
more than I do, and, to my benefit, they share their knowledge.
At a technology conference last March, a telecommunications chief
executive groaned onstage about his troubles. I noted this in
my Web log, which I was updating from the audience via a wireless
network link. Soon I (along with Doc Searls, another journalist-blogger),
got messages from a reader in another city. The reader included
hyperlinks to an authoritative Web site showing how the executive
had sold stock worth more than $200 million while his company
was suffering. We both immediately posted this information. Some
in the audience were soon reading our blogs, and the mood toward
the ceo seemed to chill. Talk about real-time feedback.
The readers themselves are coming up with excellent journalism,
via their own Web logs, mail lists, and other content. Glenn Fleishman’s
wireless technology blog (80211b.weblogger.com/)
is one of the best sources of information on the topic, regardless
of medium. In the days and weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, telecommunications
professor Dave Farber's "Interesting People" e-mail
list (www.interesting-people.org)
brilliantly reflected his correspondents' perspectives —
ranging from national-security issues to critiques of religion,
followed by critiques of what he was sending out — and became
essential reading for its breadth and depth.
Evolving electronic gear will keep blurring the lines. Camera-equipped
mobile phones are going to create all kinds of interesting new
views, for example. One of these days, we’ll see 500 photographs
of some major event in Tokyo, all e-mailed to a Web site from
people’s phones.
Emerging techniques will raise new issues. We’ll have to
find ways to deal with important questions of accuracy, trust,
ethics, and law. The forces of central control, meanwhile, are
not sitting by quietly in the face of the challenge. They’re
trying to rein in the Internet’s interactivity, to turn it
into little more than glorified television. And the business model
for interactive news is deeply uncertain.
But
We Media is coming. Check that: It’s here.
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Dan Gillmor is a columnist for The San Jose Mercury News
and hosts Dan Gillmor’s eJournal (www.dangillmor.com).
He is writing a book about We Media.
