Who could have known, less than three short years ago, that little iBrattleboro would find itself at the center of a new media phenomenon worthy of panel discussion at a professional journalism conference? And yet, it has happened. This weekend, Chris and I were panelists in the Participatory Journalism discussion at the Online News Association conference in New York City, representing iBrattleboro.com and citizen journalism to a sophisticated audience of ‘real’ journalists.
I must say, it was almost intimidating. There we were amongst reporters and editors from places like USA Today, ABC News, and Reuters, and for some reason, they all wanted to know about us. But apparently, participatory journalism is a media buzzword right now, and everyone is trying to figure out how to incorporate it into their online news operations. In any event, the room was packed.
Our panel consisted of Will Femia, manager of MSNBC blogs, Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review, and yours truly, as founders of iBrattleboro. The dapper Kinsey Wilson, VP and Editor-In-Chief of USAToday.com, was the moderator. The focus of the discussion was on citizen journalism, and the problems and rewards of using it in the context of online news.
Pretty quickly, it emerged that scale was a big issue. Chris remarked that our site gets about 3-5,000 unique visitors a week on average. Will Femia replied that MSNBC.com gets a million unique visitors a day. iBrattleboro gets 10 stories on a high volume day — MSNBC gets thousands. Clearly incorporating participatory journalism into a national news site is a whole different kettle of fish than running a community news site in a town of 12,000.
Femia, who works in a somewhat understaffed department of two people (including himself), underscored the problems of implementing participatory journalism on a large scale. High on his list of issues were volume, low quality of submissions, stories that were reaction rather than reporting, and plagiarism, especially of photos. MSNBC.com keeps its citizen participation in one section, and directs submission content by assigning specific story topics.
Although his remarks tended to highlight the difficulties, Femia said he liked the authenticity of some of the better stories and the sense of realism they conveyed. He also cited the Katrina missing persons list that the site put up as an example of a participatory effort that worked — the names were published directly to the site and only a small number of obvious fakes (Mike Brown, George W. Bush, and the like) had to be deleted.
Up next was Robert Niles, who had the added distinction (at least for us) of being the publisher of Theme Park Insider. He manages somewhat lower volume sites, but had good advice for citizen journalist wannabes all the same. First off, he suggested that no matter how big or small the site, that you hire a good developer to implement it. He also recommended requiring registration under real names in order to post. Finally, he made it clear that for large sites especially, citizen journalism works best when topics are assigned or when the site focuses on a single niche topic rather than trying to host a free-for-all (like iBrattleboro).
Nevertheless, Niles, whose assigned topic was wikis, was strongly supportive of participatory journalism in all its forms. “Trust your audience,” he said, “sometimes, they know more than you do.” (Wikis are information sites, such as wikipedia.com, that get their content directly from users.)
Chris and I came up last, without a prepared presentation, but luck was on our side and we managed to remember almost everything we wanted to say. Chris described the not-so-glorious beginnings of iBrattleboro — the open source software, the $5 advertising effort (remember the i-word flyers?), the first hundred registered users. He talked about how great it is to be able to get up in the morning and read what our neighbors have to say about things on our own local news site.
We talked about how iBrattleboro was able to take on issues that might not make it into our Media News-owned newspaper — things like the union drive at the Reformer or the Wilder Fire which happened on a weekend, after the weekend Reformer had already hit the newstands. We talked at length about how different it is to run a community news site in a small market. Countering Femia’s claim that ‘real’ news stories are few and far between in citizen journalism, we stressed that despite the chaotic nature of this medium, a lot of valuable information does come out. It may not be grammatically perfect, spelled right, or formulated in the form of a news story, but it’s useful information all the same.
We received quite a few questions from members of the audience both during and after the discussion. Most of their questions dealt with revenue (do we make any money off this), libel and liability, how much time we spend on the site, what stories we’ve refused to publish, what software we use, and the like. Our moderator asked an excellent question about citizen journalism and community, which I don’t think we really answered (the answer is Yes, citizen journalism fosters community). And one savvy intern even asked about the ‘democracy angle’ which we were delighted to expound upon.
We closed our bit with a summation of our philosophy on citizen journalism and major media — don’t try it. It won’t work, not on a national scale, not with millions of unique site visitors a day. But we did (after a timely reminder) remember to trot out a few suggestions for how a big media outlet can do participatory journalism. They were, to wit: celebrity chats like the Washington Post does and selective commenting on major stories. We’ve since, of course, thought up more suggestions, but that’s always the way of things – your best ideas come too late.
For me, the best part was realizing how legitimizing this event was for citizen journalists in general, both ourselves and others at the conference who, like us, had probably been feeling a little small. It made us realize that we have a place in the media world, and that we haven’t gone unnoticed. In fact, just this evening, on Jim Lehrer’s News Hour, we heard the term citizen journalist three times, by various commentators on the role of media in the Valerie Plame leak case. In short, it seems as if citizen journalism has come into its own. In that regard, all of us at iBrattleboro should feel really proud of the role we’ve played in making that happen. Real journalists have had to acknowledge that sometimes, citizens have something to say too, and it behooves them to listen. Even if we bury the lead or screw up our attributions.
By way of a footnote, we have to tell you that at the cocktail party that evening (open bar! sponsored by Reuters and the NY Times), a photographer went around taking our pictures. We smiled and thought nothing of it. Later, someone from Reuters grabbed the mic and announced that from 10 to midnight that evening, our pictures would be shown on the 22-story Reuters sign in Times Square. For the citizen journalists in the room, this was surely the icing on the cake of a very unusual day.