.FLYINGHEAD GUEST EDITORIAL
.TITLE Citizen journalism: is it sustainable?
.AUTHOR Jorge Sosa
.SUMMARY Technology giveth and it taketh away.
.OTHER
Chuck D. knew the score.
If you’re a particularly obsessive music geek, you might recall how [[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/portablemusic/news/2003/10/60650|the Public Enemy frontman once defended peer-to-peer music file-sharing]] as good for the artists, if not for the labels. Congress didn’t quite buy that argument, but a phrase he used has long stuck with me.
.H1 "Technology giveth and it taketh away…"
How true for just about every industry, although today I’m particularly concerned about how much it can give to and take away from journalists. I’m a biased source on this issue. Full disclosure: I write full-time for a newspaper, I get paid to do so, and I’d like to keep it that way.
There’s been some buzz in certain circles lately around the notion that a news organization could be run more profitably if it had fewer staffers and more stringers and unpaid contributors generating content. I guess when Arianna Huffington proved you could build an online empire that way, people noticed.
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This is a perfect example of the Internet giving and taking away. It’s given news organizations access to talented contributors all across the world. It’s given reporters powerful tools for finding and combing through public data, and reaching out to potential sources. And it’s also ushered in what some have described as the era of cheap content. When so many people are willing to do (or at least approximate) the work journalists do for free, it puts downward pressure on paid journalists’ value in the marketplace.
This is why, at the risk of sounding elitist, I’d long questioned crowdsourcing or citizen journalism. And, I’d long questioned whether (to use a military metaphor) a ragtag militia of volunteers and low-paid mercenaries could keep an effective watch against abuses of power.
The scary thing is, in early February, something happened to make me question all my questioning. I hate when that happens.
.H1 Citizen watchdogs
In early February, I was sent down to St. Paul — the Minnesota state capitol and home to the people who make those horribly addictive Salted Nut Rolls — to cover an ethics panel hearing questioning alleged misconduct by our local senator (for the record, he was acquitted).
The reason I made the roughly 70-mile trip was because the Senate wasn’t planning on live-streaming the event, so I couldn’t cover it from afar. But, unbeknownst to me until I got to St. Paul, somebody else was live-streaming it: [[http://theuptake.org/|The UpTake]].
The UpTake was founded as a nonprofit citizen-driven news outlet in 2007. It wasn’t the only metro news outlet covering the hearing, but it was the only one I saw providing live video streaming of the entire event. I was impressed. Here was someone using the crowdsourcing model to provide even more comprehensive coverage than the mainstream news media were.
What was up with that? Being the curious type, I later called one of The UpTake’s founders to find out. Michael McIntee, a former longtime TV news exec and now the The UpTake’s executive producer, told me he and his colleagues launched their venture with the intent of covering the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, live.
They got warmed up by covering as many primaries and caucuses as they could. "Nobody had put cameras in caucuses in Iowa before like we were doing," McIntee told me. "We were well-versed in doing live stuff by the time we got to the RNC."
The magic of the Internet also gave them an edge in providing live coverage of protests outside the convention. To put it quite mildly, [[http://www.minnpost.com/politicalagenda/2008/09/19/3580/st_paul_dropping_all_misdemeanor_charges_for_journalists_arrested_during_rnc|things got a little hairy, with police arresting journalists as well as protesters.]] McIntee said one advantage of being able to stream live video from cellphones during the chaos was, "They couldn’t confiscate your video, because it was already out on the Internet."
Technology giveth, indeed.
Today, McIntee said The UpTake has a core of about a dozen volunteers that do the "heavy lifting," but it has about 100 or more volunteers helping to edit copy, moderate live blogs and other duties. "We want to broaden that base in terms of people who occasionally help us, versus those that do the hard work," he added.
The UpTake has some paid staff — and McIntee isn’t one of them — that help provide constant coverage of the Legislature. He said the staff aren’t paid what he considers their market value, because The UpTake can’t afford to. But these are people who aren’t in it for the money. Even some of The UpTake’s hired freelancers also volunteer their time.
.H1 Is it sustainable?
Like many other news outfits these days, The UpTake is grappling with the question of how to make its mission sustainable. Their model, which relies so heavily on a lot of unpaid workers, makes sense for a nonprofit. But I still have qualms about how it could work for a traditional, or "legacy," news provider.
For starters, The UpTake’s stance on the issues it covers isn’t entirely neutral. Occasional headlines such as, "Meet the Koch Brothers’ Future Union-Busters" and "What the Revolution Feels Like and Looks Like in Michigan" hint at where its sympathies lie.
McIntee admits The UpTake has a liberal bent. But he doesn’t believe in the traditional definition of objectivity in news, anyway. "Journalism doesn’t have to be balanced," he said. "Journalism needs to be fair. Journalism needs to be true … If (an opinion) is B.S., it doesn’t have to go in there."
McIntee’s definition of fairness is giving people the chance to respond if they’re attacked, and not knowingly putting something in a story that’s false. In my opinion, this pushes the concept of news closer toward "informed commentary." And that’s OK, I guess, as long readers/viewers know that’s what they’re getting. And, if The UpTake is streaming things like an ethics panel hearing in its entirety, with no edits, then the only bias you’ll see is coming from the politicians in front of the camera.
I admit, I’m still impressed with The UpTake. They definitely fulfill a need, supplementing and rounding out the coverage provided by more traditional news outlets. But I hope their model isn’t the mold for future for-profit media enterprises, ultimately for purely selfish reasons.
It’s very admirable and inspiring that folks are willing to become journalists simply for the love of it. I recall saying to my wife, when I first began working as a professional reporter about six years ago, "Don’t tell my boss this, but I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this."
But if it came down to it, I would have a hard time doing this for free. I have no illusions about getting rich this way, but if I’d wanted to take a vow of poverty, I’d have been a monk.
.BIO Jorge Sosa is a writer/photographer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached via email at jsosa1234@gmail.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jsosa1234.
