“I am jealous of you young journalists. Everything is possible in this age. This is yours to improve and evolve… I wish I was your age,” said Dan Gillmor at the keynote address, focusing on journalism for the people, by the people.
“I am jealous of you young journalists. Everything is possible in this age. This is yours to improve and evolve… I wish I was your age,” said Dan Gillmor at the keynote address, focusing on journalism for the people, by the people.
Gillmor took the audience through the history of media development and discussed the changes which follow the current media dynamics producers are faced with. From early paintings on cave walls, to papyrus, through to social media, communication has played a significant role in human society.
Skipping a few centuries, Gillmor explained that something happened in media with the advent of the printing press, or media 1.0.
“Speed increased and the media could move as fast as a horse could. The Telegraph further improved the speed of communication. Television was also powerful, but not as powerful as what is to come,” explained Gillmor.
Media version 3.0 happened; the explosion of the internet, which extended all previous forms of media. And this is what Gillmor argues we will spend a long time trying to comprehend. The technology we’re using in the media is collaborative and therefore there needs to be exchanged between consumers and creators regarding media and news creation.
“Media needs to change from being a lecture, to becoming a conversation,” said Gillmor, who believes that to consider where we are going, it is useful to consider where we [media]came from. Traditional journalism was focused on manufacturing and distribution.
“We don’t do this anymore. Today we create stuff, put it online and people come to get it,” said Gillmor.
“People ask the question ‘if everyone can create media now, who’s the journalist?’” However, Gillmor believes “The question people should be asking is ‘what is journalism?’
Gillmor argued that simply creating media and putting it online is not journalism.
“Anyone can commit an act of journalism whether we are called a journalist or not, we’re capable of being participants in the process,” he said.
Due to the blurring of lines between journalism and citizen collaboration, interesting online groups have developed on the web, covering niche issues news publications often lack. He gave examples of The Human Rights Watch and WikiLeaks.
With the velocity of information online, Gillmor stated that much of this information is junk, “Twitter is a place where news is broken and false information is broken, so who should the audience trust?”
Principles such as “thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, independence and transparency,” should therefore remain in everyday journalistic practice, said Gillmor.
“We also need to crowd source. Journalists are realising that the audience knows more than they do.”
