Naming the new journalism
Ok, so I joked about putting the ME in Media, but there’s a serious point to all of this - the web is helping to break down distinctions between “the media” and “the non-media”. The ability of anyone in the world to contribute to or even break news stories via the web has led to terms like “citizen journalism” - for example, see Dan Gillmore’s We the Media: The Rise of Citizen Journalism (2004).
However, I think the phrase “citizen journalism” makes it sound like the non-media are now the media… if that makes sense. Jeff Jarvis puts the point better:
this isn’t about citizens or amateurs vs. professionals. We’re all in this together. Journalism is a collaborative venture. Journalism is a network.
Hence his vote for the term “networked journalism”. Jarvis also posted an offering from Reason’s Julian Sanchez: “distributed journalism”. I think these are getting closer to the mark.
-> Update: came across “participatory journalism” in a 2003 Online Journalism Review article
Posted: July 12th, 2006 under Media Interview Trends, Technology and Media Interviews.