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Congress reframes reporters—none too soon

email   discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Dec 21, 2007 at 1:57 PM

The Citizen Media Law Project notes that Congress just passed a Freedom of Information Act reform that broadens the definition of “a representative of the news media” as follows:

[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.

Note the language “of potential interest to a segment of the public”—a definition that echoes the Center for Social Media’s description of public media. In this framework, public media projects both inform publics and are potentially co-created by them via open, participatory platforms. As a result, we are no longer members of a monolithic “public,” but constituents of dynamic and sometimes overlapping publics concerned with larger political, social and cultural issues.

While the president still needs to approve the FOIA reform, this marks a hopeful shift in U.S. journalism. Independent and citizen reporters are increasingly needed to support and spur public discourse as the quality of commercial journalism devolves. This is particularly true on the local level, a situation recently exacerbated by the FCC decision to relax ownership rules for local media markets.

The universe of local and hyper-local reporting projects continues to grow. Mark Glaser at MediaShift does a great job of cataloguing different flavors of hyper-local coverage, while sites like Placeblogger aggregate citizen news and opinion from around the country.

While many questions remain about the uses, reliability and sustainability of such projects, they provide a vibrant alternative to ever-more-vapid local news and entertainment options. What’s more, as David Sasaki writes over at the Idea Lab, the “movement to train a new generation of citizen journalists to use online tools in order to share their personal and community narratives… is far from limited to just the United States. In fact, some of the most innovative examples of citizen journalism training are taking place across the non-Western world. ” Check out his post for links to community media experiments from Asia, Africa and India, among others.


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Note the language "of potential interest to a segment of the public"--a definition that echoes the Center for Social Media's description of public media. In this framework, public media projects both inform publics and are potentially co-created by them via open, participatory platforms. As a result, we are no longer members of a monolithic "public," but constituents of dynamic and sometimes overlapping publics concerned with larger political, social and cultural issues. While the president still needs to approve the FOIA reform, this marks a hopeful shift in U.S. journalism. Independent and citizen reporters are increasingly needed to support and spur public discourse as the quality of commercial journalism devolves. This is particularly true on the local level, a situation recently exacerbated by the FCC decision to relax ownership rules for local media markets. The universe of local and hyper-local reporting projects continues to grow. Mark Glaser at MediaShift does a great job of cataloguing different flavors of hyper-local coverage, while sites like Placeblogger aggregate citizen news and opinion from around the country. While many questions remain about the uses, reliability and sustainability of such projects, they provide a vibrant alternative to ever-more-vapid local news and entertainment options. What's more, as David Sasaki writes over at the Idea Lab, the "movement to train a new generation of citizen journalists to use online tools in order to share their personal and community narratives... is far from limited to just the United States. In fact, some of the most innovative examples of citizen journalism training are taking place across the non-Western world. " Check out his post for links to community media experiments from Asia, Africa and India, among others. http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blogs/future_of_public_media/reframing_reporters/ ' />

Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.