« Joe Trippi at Digital Democracy Teach-In | Main | Founding Father » Gatekeepers No More? The Grassroots Challenges the Journalist PriesthoodMore notes from O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-iin. I apologize - sketchy notes of a very good panel. Jay Rosen talks about conversion from public to audience. This is starting to come apart now. Dick Morris said the Internet has done one thing radical, it has given the public a mouth. Jeff Jarvis: Now everyone has a printing press and the audience has a voice. Everyone is a reader and everyone is a writer. Importance of listening to the people. What should happen: Meetings in our towns should all be webcast. No reason not to. Insist and expect that politicians have weblogs or equivalent. Insist that political orgs have citizen-friendly web presences. We should expect public officials to enter into a dialog with us. Expect journalists to report, not just repeat. The day of one-size-fits-all journalism are over. Jay: Media and the press should be seen as different. Press is an important institution; should sustain its authority. John McCarthy asks about connection between press feedback and campaign technology. Jeff mentions that a blog is just a tool… one guy in Canada posted how to blog in Persian, now there’s a bushel of Persian weblogs that may be part of a revolution. Jay: problem that journalists stopped caring whether people were becoming engaged, and focused only on information delivery, not en gagement. Bopnews.com is about blogging of the president, 2004. Chris Lydon creates audio interviews that are unlimited in length. An interview is a very democratic instrument. Ebayization of politics? Jay: it’s not just that people can get information without going to traditional media. It’s the different perspectives / diversities of perspectives. It’s that bloggers are doing it for love, and that is an advantage that they have. Love of what’s right, of participation, of their community, etc. That’s a very powerful thing. Amateurs are a threat not because they are going to take over a franchise, but because they have such different motivations for what they’re doing. The root of the word ‘amateur’ is ‘lover.’ Q from Tim Bishop. Is it harder to explain technology to politics or politics to technologists? What are the imperatives that push the mass media toward infotainment (if I understood the question correctly). Dan respects mass media, and is part of it. Jay says journalists don’t exactly know what their future is; the space where they can practice their craft is squeezed by potential withdrawal of investment in journalism. People aren’t making distinction between the craft of journalism and “big media,” which is actually as much a threat to professional journalists. The authority system journalists had of representing the public with the insiders is coming apart. Now journalists are seen as insiders themselvese, and this has worn away at their authority. Some journalists are hip, and are trying to figure out how to find a form of authority that is more interactive. (I was distracted, but Jeff J. just mentioned that Big Media can’t coopt blogs…and referred to big media that doesn’t coopt, but cooperates.) Q: What does digital democracy look like? What’s the role of portals? Jay: what does a democratic culture look like, is the question, and what is the role of technology in that. What can digital technology do for us in creating a democratic culture is a better question. jon posted this at 4:41 PM |
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