"We Media"

We are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism — but it is not journalism as we have known it. Media futurists have predicted that by 2021, "citizens will produce 50 percent of the news peer-to-peer." However, mainstream news media have yet to meaningfully adopt or experiment with these new forms. Historically, journalists have been charged with informing the democracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable conversations with citizens. That is the challenge.This report details the important considerations when exploring a collaborative effort between audience and traditional media organizations.

Media organizations will need to rethink some of their basic ideas about journalism, organization and the role of audience if they hope to remain indispensable resources to their readers and viewers.This chapter explores effective ways of integrating participatory journalism into existing media operations.
Connections = Value
Our research suggests a simple proposition for media in the network economy: Connections equal value. There are three types of connections that media should consider:1. Continuous connections: Magazines and newspapers need Internet counterparts that are providing continuous updates to their audience. This doesn't mean a web site filled with shovelware content. It needs to be a 24x7x365, living, breathing, responsive extension of your brand. Increase the frequency of connections with daily email newsletters, weblogs, RSS feeds and forums. 2. Network connections, online and off: Use your content (print and online) as a platform to guide and direct readers to additional news, information and experiences on the Web and in other media. Ultimately, this will make your content more valuable because it's connected to similar information. As well, your customers' media diet is becoming more varied and vast. Don't leave your product in a cul-de-sac. 3. Intercast connections: A successful news Web site is a platform that supports social interaction around the story. Print media must begin to engage and grow online community in order to build affinity and loyalty to their brand experience. Community members have a stake in your brand when they engage the journalistic process — by providing valuable commentary, displaying their mastery of a subject, offering grassroots reporting and acting as filters for their fellow readers.News organizations have policies, practices and traditions that discourage connections. Despite this, the audience is still managing to become part of the news equation by creating links and commentary that center on news events. The emergent behavior of participatory journalism suggests that audiences want to create intimate connections with news organizations, reporters and the stories they produce. The challenge in newsrooms will be to persuade writers, editors and advertisers to stop thinking in terms of a broadcast model (one-to-many) and to start "thinking network" (one-to-one).At the strategic level, a corporation must decide: Is the value of your audience going to be its size or the quality of its participation? Most likely, both factors will come into play. That leads directly to the next set of questions: What is it worth to acquire participants? What are you willing to do to keep them for the long term?

During the peace demonstrations in February, Rein took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, camcorder in hand, and shot footage of the marchers and speakers, including Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), singer Harry Belafonte and antiwar activist Ron Kovic. She posted the video on her Weblog, complete with color commentary, providing much deeper (if more subjective) coverage of the events than a viewer would get by watching the local news.
"At one point, the press started covering the protests as an annoyance, a traffic jam problem," Rein says. "Videotaping the early marches helped spread the word that there were a lot of people who had reservations about our intentions in Iraq." In recent months, Rein has covered three different conferences. At South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, she videotaped the keynote presentation by Lawrence Lessig. At the Internet Law Conference at Stanford, she interviewed one of the key speakers. Rein also taped highlights of a digital rights conference in Berkeley. She has posted countless hours of video on her Weblog, along with her analysis of events.