Liveblogging of Dan Gillmor’s speech at the Danish IT-University
Put in your questions here and i’ll try to get them asked.
About 125 people in audience. Students, academics, journalists and communication folks. The brand new IT University have one major design error in their new auditoriums - no power plugs - not even a 50 foot extender would help here! 
We the Media: The Rise of the Grassroots and Open Source News
For the last years i’ve been thinking about how technology changes journalism.
We’re moving towards ubiquitous networks - we’re always on - it’s easy to publish and the tools are getting pretty cool.
Demoing a video that Dan just shoot in the building to demonstrate the power of the new tools. Anybody can use a digital camera to take pictures in any situation, the tools are getting so much better and the amateurs have the same tools as the professionals.
Old Media, New Media - my new catchphrase “We Media” - “We” since we’re all involved in it.
Journalism becomes a conversation - or maybe a seminar. But it involves something new for journalists - listening - which is new.
The reason i think this is true is that my readers know more than i do - coming to Silicon Valley i quickly realised that the technologists off course know more about than i do - it’s their craft.
This is not a threat - this is an oppurtunity.
The same thing is happening to the “newsmakers” - politicians, our institutions - they have to get used to it - they have to deal with it - but they are very unsure how to do that. They’re just figuring it out.
Traditional jounalism still have it’s place - we need sources we can trust.
Example - pictures of the Jakarta bombing showed up at Flickr before traditional photographers arrived on the scene.
Something else - factchecking is global. Example: Disinfopedia. Design to track propaganda political or commercial and deconstruct it and debunk it. Recommended to everyone involved in media.
Fact checking is fast.
This is gonna change american journalism in a major way.
Example: Bush Guard Duty documents. I’m not sure what to believe - but fact checking is all over the weblogs. Traditionel journalism would have figured it out by now - with their ressources - it just happened much more quickly because of the bloggers.
When i make a mistake in my column and my blog - my credability go up if i admit an error and fix it immediately. Journalists are gonna get used to transparency like we expect from others - but it’s difficult - we’re not used to it.
Inviting the audience.
Occasionally governments do something smart. After the space shuttle Columbia broke up - the US space agency asked people to send their photographs - debris, a photo of something in the sky - they invited people to submit their pictures - they asked for help. Several thousand people respondeded. This was somewhat a breakthrough in the government. The people had more data than the government.
The affect on my profession is simple - we must ask people to submit their pictures. BBC case on the Iraq war.
When we start trusting our audicence we’ll realize that they have a lot to tell us.
The Tim Berners Lee vision - the read and write web. It turned into a read only web because business got a hold of it - the business model for “content” is not particurlarly interesting. The weblog became the first tool where it was just as easy to write on the web as to read on the web.
That was a huge breakthrough.
Dave Winer called me up in 1999 and said - you must see something. An empty page with a button called “editthispage” and another called “save” and it was live on the web. That was unbelievable - it’s the writeable web.
Qestion from the audience. Not everybody wants to publish - but everyone wants to communicate. Not everyone wants to produce new - and not everyone should
I think most people are gonna stay couch potatoes in terms of defining news.
But lot’s of new sources - no one are stuck with what i say - they can find other sources.
The effect on journalists are almost the least interesting part - people are creating news in their own ways, they’re helping each other navigate around business, they are navigating around goverments, they’re finding each other.
Everybody are gonna be famous for 15 people. I love that statement.
It makes us more media savyy - the media literacy is going up. They might not talk to us - but they’re talking to each other.
It not news as the way we used to think of news - but it’s news in a new way.
SMS/Swarming/Smartmobs - recommending Howard Rheingold’s book.
The capability to communicate is becoming ubiquitous, simpler and cheaper.
Example the first gulf war blackout - no one is gonna be able to hide anything anymore. The military people they’re thinking about it. They now their job just got easier with tools, but also much more difficult.
Showing the moveon bush ad - done by a american located in Denmark.
New models and business models:
OhMyNews. They trust their reader to be the contributers - something like 80% of the articles on the site are written by the readers. They’re profitable. People all over the world are trying to duplicate it .
Niche: Case, Gizmodo. Any company doing gadgets wants to reach their audience.
New Media Subscriptions. Back in Iraq case. Fundraising to go to Iraq and cover the war.
Self-assembling Journalism. Case - The Command Post. People collaborating to cover the iraq.
Open Source Journalism.
- Wikipedia
- center for cooperative research
Tomorrows news
Really Simple Syndication - whatever the acronym, it’s the future of news. Newsreader and the killer functionality of the subscription web.
Search tools. Demonstrating Feedster and Technorati.
Truth.
I’m used to being mislead. People i talk to frequently are trying to get me to go in one direction. We’re always as journalists being “spun” - everything is spin - everybody wants their share of the story.
We’ve got a lot of work to do. Data point. The secrets will be harder to keep - and that’s unbalanced probably a good thing. It’s interesting that the word is getting out - with digital photography the game is over - you can’t keep it down.
Cameras are everywhere.
It’s good - but there are always consequences.
Privacy - we want our privacy maintained - and we’re not dealing very well with this. Technologists know that if you don’t build it in early, it won’t work if you try to change it later.
It’s a global platform - all these tools are also being used by some pretty nasty folks - terrorists and kidnappers in Iraq. Journalists need to start asking themselves questions - these people who did this - without us, their act meant nothing. We’re part of that process - we need to talk about this. I’m a long way from having answers.
The goverment also uses these tools - publishing total transcripts of interviews with journalists - Donald Rumsfeld case. People being interviewed posting transcripts or videos of interviews - source materiale will be available.
The law also intrudes - threatening letters, cease and desists - exposure to libel laws. This worries me - if the standards we need to hold up to are the lowest global standards it will have chilling effects on free speech.
If i need to think about what the goverment in China thinks when i’m posting on my blog we have a problem.
EFF, Pen, etc. can help to protect free speech.
Don’t get put into a walled garden.
.jpg)