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Session 3a: How Participatory Journalism Is Being Used Now

Jan Schaffer

  • “Going to bringing this back to participatory journalism, because this isn’t supposed to be about blogger dot com”
  • “We were interactive before digital media” — Not conflict driven, participatory
  • New media: speed, delivery, moving parts (“bells and whistles”….”more noise”)
  • Participatory journalism: on people, connections, conversations…on attachment
  • The story we are missing: not about blogs, but about media participation
  • Media participation: not just telling the stories, but telling them
  • This [US] election is about media participation: MoveOn.org, the “Dean Scream” remixes, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Outfoxed
  • Story Making:
    • Internal: Consuming stories people make
    • External: Making stories people consume
  • Internal story making: Individuals as news aggregators: people develop an internal sense of the news based on the input they get
  • External story making: blogs, email, citizen media
  • Future news: people constructing those stories. Not something you read, something you do
  • Early civic journalism: town hall meetings, mock juries
  • Confession: “I’m not a fan of blogs.”
    • Not useful
    • Narcissistic
    • Niche
  • Where they have the most utility:
    • Beat reporters use blogs for stories that don’t merit inclusion in the paper
    • Editorial boards can use blogs so that ed board members can be held accountable for their opinions and can explain them
  • Showed online educational games and multimedia sites as a way of
    making news and other information more accessible to the average person
  • Need
    to build entry points, which means you build
    attachments/relationships/audiences. Build connections and people
    respond to that
  • “Blogs are the 50-foot view. Participatory journalism is the 5,000-foot view.”


Spider-man says:
Snotty self-important journalist senses…tingling!

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