Session 3a: How Participatory Journalism Is Being Used Now

Jan Schaffer

• “Going to bringing this back to participatory journalism, because this isn’t supposed to be about blogger dot com”
• “We were interactive before digital media” — Not conflict driven, participatory
• New media: speed, delivery, moving parts (“bells and whistles”….”more noise”)
• Participatory journalism: on people, connections, conversations…on attachment
• The story we are missing: not about blogs, but about media participation
• Media participation: not just telling the stories, but telling them
• This [US] election is about media participation: MoveOn.org, the “Dean Scream” remixes, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Outfoxed
• Story Making:
• Internal: Consuming stories people make
• External: Making stories people consume
• Internal story making: Individuals as news aggregators: people develop an internal sense of the news based on the input they get
• External story making: blogs, email, citizen media
• Future news: people constructing those stories. Not something you read, something you do
• Early civic journalism: town hall meetings, mock juries
• Confession: “I’m not a fan of blogs.”
• Not useful
• Narcissistic
• Niche
• Where they have the most utility:
• Beat reporters use blogs for stories that don’t merit inclusion in the paper
• Editorial boards can use blogs so that ed board members can be held accountable for their opinions and can explain them
• Showed online educational games and multimedia sites as a way of
  making news and other information more accessible to the average person
• Need
  to build entry points, which means you build
  attachments/relationships/audiences. Build connections and people
  respond to that
• “Blogs are the 50-foot view. Participatory journalism is the 5,000-foot view.”

Spider-man says: Snotty self-important journalist senses…tingling!