The internet has evolved from a read-only medium to a read-write medium, journalist Dan Gillmor said Tuesday at an informal presentation at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.
“Blogs are the first instance of this read-write phenomenon, but it’s not the last. There’s more coming,” said Gillmor, a blogger at Bayosphere.com and the author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
“Journalism is changing from the lecture mode … to a conversation or a seminar where we take the publication and move on to something better,” Gillmor explained.
Gillmor discussed his well-known credo “my readers know more than I do.” This is true for all journalism, he said, and instead of being viewed as threatening, it should be viewed as an opportunity.
An example of community members sharing their knowledge with others would be Wikipedia.org, which Gillmor called “the most important experiment today in bottom-up content. … I’m in awe of what these guys have accomplished.” In fact, Gillmor, noted for his dedication to grassroots journalism, said: “I go to school there to learn about community online.”
“Making sense of this global conversation is really difficult,” Gillmor said, but ultimately, “[Blogging is] a kind of wonderful noise, and I love the noise,” Gillmor said. Journalism should be a clear signal above the noise, and the challenge is to get people to pay attention to it, he added.
Gillmor urged responsible practices in participatory journalism and blogging. On his own site, he has citizen journalists sign a pledge where contributors agree to work in the community interest. In addition to asking for people’s real names, the pledge states that accuracy, thoroughness, fairness and transparency are expected standards.
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