Session 3c: How Participatory Journalism Is Being Used Now

Neil Heinan

• “I’m the dinosaur…I’m the manual typewriter in this group.”
• With We the People/Wisconsin: US’s oldest civic journalism project
• “I understand the power of the camera-equipped cell phone, but we’re still struggling with that in Madison, Wisconsin.”
• “Dragging the citizens to the candidates”
• Will forego the moderator in the next set of political debates and just have them talk to each other
• Want to have the candidates answer citizen’s emailed questions
• Want to make the questions posed to candidates “fair”: “Fairness…which is as far from the blogosphere as you can get.”
• Still trying to get citizens to talk to each other, face to face.
  “As valuable as computer-to-computer is,” the idea of citizens talking
  to each other and to candidates running for office is something valuable
• Shortcoming: we have traditionally cut out young people from the
  process. Active attempts at fixing this: inviting middle-school
  minority students intot he newsroom
• Some input from web-based participatory journalism
• Here as an old-school practitioner, trying to incorporate the online innovations.