We the Media review

Wendy M Grossman ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 09 Sep 2005

In the early days of the Internet, it was commonly believed that journalism had no future, since everyone would have direct access to all the background material that journalists usually work from. In fact, as it turns out, the bigger problem for traditional journalism comes from two other factors. First, a lot of the advertising that traditionally supports print publications -- classifieds and recruitment ads -- work better online, where they can be kept up-to-date more easily. Second, paid journalists are constantly competing with motivated individuals who research topics in far more depth than the average journalist. Dan Gillmor left what was arguably the best job in technology journalism -- columnist for the San Jose Mercury News -- to pursue his ideas about citizen journalism.

In We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People, Gillmor makes it plain how much he hopes traditional journalism will survive. Who but large media organisations, he argues, can put up the resources to do proper investigative journalism? How will future Watergates ever be exposed without it? But Gillmor does not expect even that type of journalism to survive without change. Journalism, as he documents, is becoming a conversation and collaboration between journalists and readers. Events like 9/11 or the attacks in London in July 2005 are captured as much by ordinary individuals who happen to be on the scene as they are by professionals paid to take the risk of going there.

Even more important, local stories, which are in general overlooked by increasingly corporate media, may never be recognised as worthy of coverage without the attention of impassioned individuals. Gillmor's fear is that government and corporate interests will ally to close down the openness of the Internet that promotes this kind of collaboration.

Some of the examples Gillmore analyses are familiar: the Internet-driven campaign of Howard Dean, McSpotlight, Indymedia, Wikipedia. Others are less so, such as the Melrose Mirror. But all show a movement towards journalism as collaboration. Not that Gillmor thinks that any of these are perfect. As he says, you must be careful when evaluating the information you get from impassioned advocacy journalists who do not have editors checking what they write.

Gillmor goes on to cover other issues that aren't solely to do with journalism, such as trust and legal issues of libel and copyright. Admirably, on the last of those issues Gillmor has put his copyright where his mouth is, and is limiting the term of copyright of the book to the 14 years originally specified in US law, and is making it available on the Web for free reading and download. He also posted early drafts on his Web site and incorporated readers' comments and criticisms into the final book.

Although this is a book primarily about journalism, most of it applies to the future of all information. Every business publishes; every business deals with the media. In the future, every business will have to consider the problems and opportunities of company and employee blogs and the media Gillmor is describing.

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