The head of my old PR Department just emailed me this story about how traditional media has the edge over citizen journalism - written by a traditional journalist. Here’s some info the Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found after surveying 145 citizen and 218 “legacy” news sites in 46 U.S. markets:
- Citizen sites are twice as likely to link to “legacy” sites
- Contrary to popular belief, legacy media offers ways to download and receive content
- Citizen journalism lacks transparent sources
THE ARGUMENTS
Linking to Legacy Sites: Yup. How is this a shortcoming? I’m doing it now. It’s called a “hyperlink”. It’s been around for 20 years. It’s a citation that looks like a funny word with brackets on it.
Accessibility and Contact Info: Umm, read another column and try to find an email address. Services like Bacons Media Directory charge thousands per year simply so PR people can contact legacy journalists. As for accessibility, I’m amazed by the technology of being able to print and pull a link from this article. Again, it’s called a “hyperlink” - you can bookmark it and share it. Feeds? Apps? Mash ups? Mobile? Comments? (For Tumblr you start a rival Tumble log)
Sources: The Pew Report took a subset of data from the Online News Association’s members. I have no idea who belongs to this group, except that their only qualifying factor for “citizen journalism” is that you pay $75 a year to become an ONA member.
Hume goes on to write, “I’ve never met a reporter or editor who took money or who accepted favours to place a story. I’ve never been told what to write — or not write — or how to write it.” Lucky you!
How many major media conglomerates are there in Canada right now? Can you even name 5?
In 2002, the Aspers fired Russell Mills as the publisher for the Ottawa Citizen for criticism of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. At the time, CanWest owned the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, The Gazette (Montreal), Victoria Times-Colonist, Windsor Star and the Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun. Today CanWest owns Global, the Financial Post, 25 community newspapers and a slew of non-news specialty channels like History Television and HGTV. At what point is “legacy” media simply just a soapbox for whoever can afford to control it?
NO NEWS IS PERFECT
Anything controlled by humans is fallible. It’s true that both legacy and online journalism have their faults, but what would truly objective news look like? Is it just a live camera feed with no human editing, biased commentary or financial conflicts? Because my friend Nate just put a camera on his tuxedo cat Oreo. If we can herd enough camera cats, we might be able to wrangle a pretty decent news team.
