the have nots

A few months ago, I was invited to speak as a panelist at the 2009 Schuneman Symposium, hosted by Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. The symposium’s topic was–surprise, surprise–politics and new media. I was invited to talk about my research and use of new media, as it pertained to my work with Scoop08 (now Scoop44) and coverage leading up to and during the election.

I thought that serving on a panel with academia, professionals and journalists would allow me to go unnoticed during the question and answer portion of the panel. Wrong; the first question for the panel I served on was explicitly directed to me: “Miss Huelsman, in your presentation, you referred to the ‘Facebook generation.’ Who is the ‘Facebook generation?’And aren’t you being an elitist by excluding those who don’t have access to the Internet?”

After overcoming the initial shock that a small-town-farm-girl-from-the-middle-of-nowhere was now being called an “elitist,” I paused for a moment and then rattled off the definition of the “Facebook generation,” as I had read in a recent news article. I explained that it is not an entire “generation,” per se, but rather a subset of “generation y” and “millenials” that exists because of its dependency on the Internet.

Then I considered the second part of the question–what about those who don’t have Internet access? As the journalism industry is in the transition of setting up residency online, what do we do to reach those have nots and make sure they can reach us?

We support citizen journalism. By giving citizen journalism our full support, the have nots are being more innovative than ever, employing methods of ground-breaking journalism. Here are two of my favorite examples:

• Last July, the Knight Foundation provided money for a project in Grahamstown, South Africa, in which cell phones were given to 80 senior scholars to report. The project, “Iindaba Ziyafika” (the news is coming), allowed users to use SMS, sending content via messaging, and, eventually, messages with audio and video. This method of citizen journalism is being brought to us by a country that completely skipped land-lines.
• The recent controversy in Iran and the inability for journalists to be in the vicinity of most of the events, has proved our reliance on real time news from citizens at the protests and rallies. Rather than reading second story accounts in the day’s newspaper or visiting CNN’s Web site, we receive first person accounts via SMS updates on Twitter.

The good news is that the “digital divide” that has been created by online journalism is closing. The better news is that by supporting and being open to citizen journalism, we become better journalists, too.

j

traditional and new media: why can’t we be friends?

About a month ago, I was home for a family gathering, when my aunt approached me with her questions regarding new media. “What’s this Twitter thing? I don’t want to twitter!” Other family members chimed in, asking me whether I thought the local daily  would be replaced by blogs and Web sites.

I wasn’t surprised with their concerns. Those not familiar new media often see it as dark cloud looming over traditional media, ready to rain on its centuries-old parade. But that’s not the case. This is:

• Integration is key. New media cannot simply “replace” traditional media. The two are different, and they rely on each other. How many blog posts have you read that are reactions to stories in traditional media? One of the beautiful things about new media is the story that made the front page of the morning’s newspaper can be replaced by up-to-the-minute breaking news on the publication’s Web site.
• New media is easy-to-use. Thanks to Oprah and Ashton Kutcher, Twitter has increased by the millions in recent months. The funny thing is, many people I know refuse to blog, but are willing to have a Twitter account. Twitter is a micro-blogging site. If you use Twitter, you blog. And other forms of new media—Facebook applications and You Tube—are just as easy to navigate and use.
• Traditional media is not going anywhere, it’s just changing. While the future of traditional journalism might be uncertain, it will conform to meet new standards. New York Times Frank Rich reminds us in his recent column that Americans will forever rely on the journalists who put their lives in danger to cover news from the front line. As Rich suggests, those same journalists have to pay their rent, too. Think that paying to read an article online isn’t in our future? Think again.
• Journalism—no matter how you get it—is alive and well. Journalism schools around the globe are eager to change their curriculum to teach students how to write for multiple platforms and to adjust to multimedia standards. Students are eager to learn, too. Scoop44.com, the first-ever online national student newspaper by and for college students, is driven by youth hungry for opportunities to report. And even though the site’s content is written and edited by students, we’ll hold them to the same standards.

In my opinion, traditional and new media are made for each other. What do you think? Do you think new media will replace traditional media? Or do you think the two can live in harmony? Let me know!

j