Get Off the Bus

Columbia Journalism Review by Amanda Michel | Mar. 5, 2009 (Special Report)
The future of pro-am journalism

Collectively, we could do what a single reporter or traditional news organization could not. We dispatched people to report on dozens of events happening simultaneously around the country. We distributed research tasks among hundreds of volunteers, instead of a handful of paid reporters working full-time for weeks. Ground-level access, networked intelligence, and distributed labor became our editorial mainstays. More than twelve thousand people eventually ... Full Story »

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Kristin Gorski
3.9
 by Kristin Gorski - Mar. 5, 2009

A reflective essay on the happenings at pro-am journalism project OffTheBus, written by its director. Some fact, some opinion, some analysis and predictions for the future of citizen journalism projects like this. Interesting and relevant. DISCLOSURE: I wrote six articles for OffTheBus, and worked with Amanda on this and another pro-am journalism project.

Across the country, news budgets and newsrooms are shrinking. Newspapers are going out of business. Meanwhile, the government is propping up Wall Street with a massive bailout that will cost the public billions, and planning to invest billions more in infrastructure, green jobs, health care reform, sustainable energy, etc. In all this, there are many opportunities for critical collaborative-reporting projects that will engage thousands of people who want to make themselves useful to the press. The Obama administration may have thirteen million e-mail addresses, but together the media—both old and new—have more. The timing for a new social contract between the press and the public could not be better. There will be no reason to mourn the loss of its audience if the press fully understands and exploits the new reality that its audience can now be its ally.

I agree. As newspaper journalism continues to transition, greater community involvement—perhaps through a pro-am model like OTB—could be one way to energize it. OTB’s coverage of the presidential election greatly enhanced The Huffington Post and expanded its coverage to a whole new level—OTB didn’t adversely affect it at all.

Disclosure: Kristin is involved in this story as a co-worker (review not included in overall rating). Help

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Kristin's Rating

Overall
3.9

Good
from 21 answers
Quality
3.7
Facts
4.0
Fairness
3.0
Information
4.0
Insight
4.0
Sourcing
3.0
Style
4.0
Accuracy
4.0
Balance
3.0
Context
3.0
Depth
4.0
Enterprise
4.0
Expertise
3.0
Originality
5.0
Relevance
5.0
Transparency
4.0
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4.0
Popularity
4.5
Recommendation
4.0
Credibility
5.0
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