6th
“We the Media” essay
In We the Media, Dan Gillmor illustrates how journalism has been evolving into more of a conversation among what used to be considered the audience. The definition of journalism is beginning to expand to include web logs (blogs), online forums, e-mails, and other non-traditional sources of news available through the Internet and other technological devices.
Gillmor touches on how journalism is becoming more democratic and less institutionalized in what he deems the “Big Media.” He explains how journalism was more of a lecture. Now lines merge between who is creating and consuming the news. The Internet affords anyone’s voice; anyone can publish. He believes this rise in citizen journalism will be a solution to the corporate journalism that often runs through a profit-making agenda.
Because the Internet now allows for people to read and write, rather than just read, news is converging and people can communicate to a wide audience while simultaneously communicating with few. Essentially, current communication technology allows infinite amounts of knowledge to exist outside of news station “rations.” This means that news stations will have to be more accountable than before, as more people can “assert” that the journalism outlet facts are wrong. Gillmor sees this as a positive trend because this counters secrecy. Blogging is becoming a main fixture in journalism. Companies are beginning to use blogs to share facts and counter negative critiques about their product while news reporters sift through blogs for information and possible people to quote in articles. Blogging is used in two ways—the journalists use the citizen bloggers to comment on the news while citizen bloggers comment on the media, thus creating public conversation.
While Gilmore argues that the journalism realm is becoming positively more democratic through the existence of the Internet, he does not appear to discuss the downside of this media evolution. As the fall of the information monopoly continues as people receive information from multiple sources via the Internet, print journalism, broadcast, mobile devices, and radio, people will also trust each source a little less in context with all the other sources. While the “Big Media” will be held more accountable to the facts, consumers will have to spend more time sifting through sources for the whole of the information because each source cuts down their information to snippets due to the need to rush the timeliness of an article.
Even though Gillmor believes the rise in “grassroots journalism” is fully positive, he does not appear to notice that citizen journalism takes away the authority that journalism once had. Citizen journalism can take “freedom of speech” out of context and therefore cheapen what journalists do as a career and vocation. With the rise in the amount of people producing information via the Internet, search engines become more difficult to search for what one is actually looking.
The more media outlets that exist represent how democratic a nation has become. While the freedom that any American citizen has to voice themselves through the Internet, we must ask how far this freedom can stretch. Journalists have to follow ethical codes and laws, and citizen journalists should not escape the same accountability simply because they are independent. Also, all this available information begs the question: “Why is this much information necessary? For what is its use? Is it a lasting change?” The author appears to promote instant-gratification and forgets that not all change is good. What is happening to the quality of our lives when the perceived everyone spends their time blogging and being informed? How do we filter out the trivial and senseless material from the things that matter when there isn’t an authority figure?
