Rabiya Parekh of the BBC News’ World Have Your Say asked me for a “few lines on your media habits, who you trust in the media and the future of citizen journalism.” I responded…
I use an RSS reader called SharpReader to keep track of an organize my dizzying array of news sources. The reader allows me to work through over 700 news sources, but only sources that offer RSS, RSS2, or ATOM syndicated feeds. My experience is decontextualized because each new “story” arrives to the reader like a new email into my INBOX.
This decontextualization of content (“nothing beyond the text”) allows the opinions, analysis, insight, and reporting of anyone — Citizen Journalists included — to have equal potential impact to BBC News and the Guardian (both have very nice feeds). That is, as long as they have syndicated content and have made it into my RSS reader.
A syndicated feed — and its media outlet, be it a blog or a paper, make it into my reader if it is mentioned as an essential read (or proves itself valuable) by news and media sources I already trust, most often already in my daily feed. I don’t watch much TV and the only paper to which I subscribe is the FT, ironically. Must be the peach paper.
I do watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but via subscription through iTunes and downloaded into my iPod. I have become very fond of Podcasts and Video blogs and listen to Across the Sound by Joseph Jaffe, Rocketboom with Amanda Congdon, TWiT, and Diggnation, to name a few.
I think trust is a difficult thing when there is so much decontextualization. I think that I find myself to be extrememely discerning. My middle name is “caveat emptor” while I am reading through the feeds. This is good for citizen journalism because there is still zero barrier to entry when it becomes to being a citizen journalist; actually, the only barrier to entry is passion. Without passion, there is no reason to become a citizen journalist or citizen marketer. It is a self-selecting group.
When you get into my reader, you are truly part of a meritocracy: you are what you say, you’re as good as your argument and opinion, and you’re as trustworthy as you are able to prove you are. In the blogosphere, if people buy it then it is true. Caveat lector: let the reader beware.
The irony about the “future of citizen journalism” is that most journalist are addled by hubris, assuming that we bloggers and citizen journalists actually want to be reporters. Untrue.
What we actually want to do is affect change: influence the powers that be, influence the influencers, influence the culture, and add a voice — unique or not — into what is called the “echo chamber” of the blogosphere but is called “the passion chamber” in the “not to be missed” book Naked Conversation.
Why passion chamber? Well, without passion there is no blogosphere, there is just syndicated content. And there is no sustainability in ego chamber, either. It is not durable enough. Only love and passion are.
Does that answer your question? It’s a little long.
