What do we need to turn blogging into real citizen journalism?
I have been invited by the Sunlight Foundation to go to Harvard Law School to talk about our daily battles in blogging and citizen journalism at The Daily Gotham and [http://culturekitchen.com|culturekitchen]. These are the questions they are seeking answers to:
If we believe in an informed and engaged citizenry, what does that require? What skills and information do citizens need? What is important political information that bloggers and other new media types can provide that isn’t currently being available or accessible? What is essential political information for a citizen in the new era? Is there such a thing?
Ok people. Make yourselves heard and let it rip. I will be reading these to the audience and giving you attribution.
http://dailygotham.com/blog/liza_sabater/what_do_we_need_to_turn_blogging_into_real_citizen_journalism
Mouse over the text to select it, then press Ctrl-C to copy it.
Short opinions
Money. Especially for investigative work.
Totally, BUT
Give me an example of the things that money could buy for investigative work.
For example, I could easily make a list of the minimum amount of hardware needed for on-the-go work : a wifi'ed computer, a digital camera with .mov recorder ... maybe a digital voice recorder too with a microphone
I'm thinking less of equipment than time
To take a local example, I'm totally impressed with how Norman Oder wades through hundreds of pages of documents from ESDC. He's the only one doing it. I have no idea what kind of job he has that allows him to spend that much time on the project, but most people can't.
That's the kind of thing more citizen journalists could do if there was money in it. I wouldn't, because I'm lazy. But I bet somebody would.
What does citizen journalism need? A front page
We're trying to build it. Blognetnews is our attempt to build that front page, letting people quickly see what is the newest, most interesting, talked about citizen journalism content and then guiding them to its original source. I hope people will let me know what they think.
Investigating costs time & energy
MSM are often, but not always, doing steno journalism: reproducing releases and -- a small improvement -- getting he said, she said comments from a cadre of observers they've come to rely upon.
Bloggers have numbers and can use their personal contacts and research to deepen stories. Certainly Oder is an IF Stone type example, covering one set of issues very carefully. with better equipment and more time, we could cover NYC much better and with more focus on grass-roots action. For example, while we sometimes announce events in advance, we sometimes don't cover them.
The race for city council in SI has not yet been the subject of an article here. People wrote about Harrison's race against Fsocella, bus since then - bupkas. A Democratic City Council member would vastly strengthen any attempt in 2008 to elect democrats to congress, state senate or assembly there. On the subject of SI, I cannot even remember much coverage of mattthew titone's race. Other state senate races we didn't look in on much: nybri's upstate race and the challenges to NYC republicans
Other than elections, we're doing only a little on bread and butter issues in NYC and the state; there's room for a ton more teasing out the details. Goodness knows that some of these issues are covered elesewhere, but they and we often reporting the work of others( not checking and investigating)
We could do much more with time and equipment both.
SI Council Race
I've been involved to a limited degree with Manny Innamorato's special election campaign to fill Andrew Lanza's usually empty Southshore/Mid-Island council seat (Marchi's successor and Titone's State Senate opponent had the worst attendance in the Council)against State Assemblyman and Vincent Ignizio, a Vito protege.
Manny, the head of IT for the City of Yonkers (Talk about bad commutes), held a fundraiser last night on the Island. Steve, Janele and most Staten Island Democratic officeholders, activists and operatives were there.
Daniel is right, that a win here would help Democrats win other races in the forgotten borough (Although I appreciate Daniel not forgetting us). Ignizio, who ran unopposed for his Assembly spot, is being groomed to eventually succeed Fossella. Iggy defeated Manny for the Assembly seat in 04. Beating him in the council race will dampen his ambition and possibly give a southshore Democrat the courage to oppose him when runs for reelection to Albany.
The Council district is slightly more Democratic than that of the all Republican dominated Southshore Assembly because it includes New Springville which is mixed (New Springville became slightly less Democratic two days after election day when my wife and myself moved to the North Shore.)Manny should do better than he did against Iggy for City hall than for Albany just based on that.
Without the distractions of the Congressional and Presidential races of 04 for the Assembly or the Borough President, Mayoral and other Council races in Lanza's easy 2005 win over Craig Schlanger for this seat, the Island Democratic ground troops are all dedicated to helping Manny and that seems to be making a difference from anecdotal evidence.
The web address is Link Textmannyforcouncil.com
Phone number is (718)317-0206
Remember, a $25 donation is worth $125 because of matching funds.
I will modify this comment and post it as a blog entry as well.
Thanks for posting this.
Some of us haven't forgotten Staten Island. Even if we don't live there (I'm in Brooklyn), we have friends and family there.
This one of two special elections in our area that all NYC Democratic activists should be contributing to, whether time or money, the other being the race in Nassau to replace State Senator Balboni, the Republican chosen by Gov. Spitzer (God, I love typing that!) to head up the state homeland security department.
And some people have finally gotten around to noticing that Staten Island exists: the DCCC belatedly realizes that Vito is vulnerable http://ny13.blogspot.com/2007/01/dccc-focuses-on-fossella-for-08.html/. Just watch out if they decide that also gives them the right to choose the candidate.
PS sorry for the klutzy link, I can't figure out which tag you use to embed the link in the text.