By Mallory Perkins, Account Manager
I recently finished the book We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the people, for the people. Although the book is a little outdated, there are many key themes Dan Gillmor talks about that are still important today. Some of the topics are: the news should be talked about openly, everyone can and should create news now, and simply the idea that news is changing and everyone must make the decision to change with it, or they will be left behind.
I agreed with Gillmor that openness is one of the most important parts of social media. I think it’s so imperative to include the readers in the news. Having insight from your audience is what makes the story complete. Allowing comments and others to post their ideas and points of views about the topic helps build the full story. Openness highlights honesty, genuineness and accuracy.
“Eric Von Hippel, business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks businesses should encourage some level of hacker behavior, not shun it… Just as journalists should not be threatened by a more knowledgeable audience, companies should not be threatened by smart customers who care enough to make products better.”
You can learn from your audience so embrace their ideas, talk with them about it and gain more supporters and customers while you’re at it.
“This evolution is also about reinforcing citizenship. The emerging form of bottom-up politics is bringing civic activity back into a culture that has long since given up on politics as anything but a hard-edged game for the wealthy and powerful.”
Gillmor used this quote in We the Media which shows the positive side that the internet can bring to politics. However, according to a lot of other examples in the book, government is actually slowly but surely taking away a lot of the freedom that was promised in the beginning of the internet.
For example, laws on copyright have become more and more strict, giving the copyright holder the ability to decide whether someone gets “fair use” – which is the law allowing people to use a small portion of another’s work as part of a new work. In result, less people are using copyright in the public and therefore, thwarting innovation. This part was very interesting to me. I don’t know a whole lot about how the government has been responding to these issues recently, but I really hope the trend does not continue in this direction of controlling more and more of what we can and cannot use or even see online.
I think one of the biggest evolutions that has developed since this book was published is the huge increase in people using instant-message services like Twitter, of course, but also on sites like Facebook and Tumblr to spread news. This increase is even bigger because of the introduction of Smartphones like the iPhone which have made it easy to use tools like Twitter at any time.
For instance, the most recent example is when the U.S. Airways plane crashed into the Hudson River in New York. The first news break of this event was through Twitter when someone who was on the ferry going to pick up the people in the plane posted a picture on Twitpic. This news spread through the web faster than it got on broadcast news.
Very soon now, there will be even more videos rather than just pictures being distributed around the web since more cell phones are beginning to include that as an easy-to-use feature.
I am interested in how news is going to end up after all this change is organized and understood. It’s going to be so exciting when it’s figured out and I’m going to watch it every step of the way. I just hope it turns out as a more open, honest and interactive news. If we “the people” keep pushing for it, then we will make it happen.
Either way, we know social media is here to stay and like Gillmor said in the beginning of We the Media: “Journalists will use the tools of grassroots journalism or be consigned to history. “
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