Citizen journalism can help: Rory O'Connor and Danny Schechter on Wikis and the current state of journalism

Disappointed at the current state of what bloggers and citizen journalists have dubbed the 'mainstream media,' the two American media pundits haven't concluded that citizen journalism will cure the problems they see with large news organizations, but they're sure it can help. According to O'Connor and Schechter, the corporate culture of news production has caused newsrooms to become disconnected from and even frightened of their audience. For years, news companies have been dictating what they think people want to hear. Now, the audience is saying, "We don't want to hear it!" New technologies such as Wikis and blogs menace conventional newsrooms by placing the power of production and distribution in the hands of anyone with an Internet connection. Instead of ignoring these digital devices, the New York based duo suggest that news corporations embrace them. "One of the things that seems to be right is encouraging participation in media, taking it away from those who see it as a monastic system of professional arbiters," said Schechter. "We need to open it up for more voices and input." O'Connor evoked the Los Angeles Times' short-lived Wikitorial experiment, remarking that although it ultimately failed, it's these types of innovations that conventional media need to design to remain relevant in the rapidly changing media landscape. "Media organizations should learn to give away the control. By doing so, they'll actually end up maintaining more control," remarked O'Connor. "The ones that embrace this will succeed...the others will go under." Korea's famed OhmyNews, which pays its citizen journalists while maintaining a professional staff, was another example used by O'Connor to demonstrate the idea of what he called "pro-sumerism"; the integration of consumers into what has been normally reserved for professionals.

In distancing itself from its audience, the Globalvision partners feel that the mainstream media has lost a basic journalistic principle, a principle that citizen journalism and Wikis could help to reestablish. "Major news organizations have abandoned the core principles of journalism, which the citizens are now coming in and embracing," O'Connor explained. Other values of journalism that have been sacrificed are the tradition of trust between journalists and their audience and the 'neutral point of view,' a value which the Wiki community strives to achieve through a process of "collective intelligence" where anyone can contribute to and edit an article. Although it seems that the media has strayed from its journalistic standards, the two experienced press critics are convinced that most individual media professionals still hold these values at heart, the first step to reforming the corporate structure of contemporary news companies.

One frequent criticism of citizen journalism and the spirit of Wikis is the way that they have steered all media towards providing free information for the world. Many feel that free news would be detrimental to the type of investigative journalism practiced by mainstream news organizations needed to hold governments and companies accountable. But Schechter and O'Connor feel that apart from budgetary concerns, investigative journalism has already suffered due to the increasing compliance of journalists with politicians and corporate executives. Their remedy? Once again, listen to the public. "We want to persuade the press to cover the stories we want to hear, to be more critical and more collaborative with its audience," said Schechter. "In doing so, (the media) will eventually find a way to marry the money with the meaning."

With the release of their upcoming project on Wikis and CJ, the two filmmakers plan to practice what they preach. "Over the course of this conference, we've come to the conclusion that we should make a "Wikimentary," surrendering our control as directors of the film, making a rough cut and having our audience have at it on the Web. We're interested to find out what happens." Whether Globalvision's project is successful or not, the media world is bound to witness similar experiments in the coming years as it struggles to adapt to the Internet, incorporate citizen journalism and regain the trust of its audience.