When the Crowd Doesn

1
When the Crowd Doesnt See the Value

• Crowdsourcing, Citizen Journalism, and the
  Cultural Production of Local Online News

2
Two Case Studies out of Minnesota

• Twin Cities Daily Planet (in Minneapolis-St.
  Paul, MN -- combined population of about 3.5
  million)
• Locally Grown Northfield (in Northfield, MN --
  population of about 17,000)
• Both working with different models of citizen
  journalism combined with professional journalism
• Looking at questions of cultural production and
  value (cultural, financial)

3
What is Twin Cities Daily Planet?

• Publication established to give voice to those
  who might not have any exposure in MSM
• Citizen-generated blogs
• Community and ethnic member medias stories
• Training for would-be citizen journalists who do
  write for TC Daily Planet and elsewhere

4
Research Questions Related to Citizen Journalism
and Value

• First, how does the crowd or participant feel
  about the value of its contribution to a news
  site?
• And second, how does the journalist or editor
  feel about the value of its contribution to a
  news site?

5
TC Daily Planet

• Founded in 2006
• Founded by TC Media Alliance
• Supported by grants and reader donations
• Overseen by fulltime editor
• Executive director/publisher
• A couple of fulltime editors, interns

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Citizen journalism as somewhat professionalized

• News and feature stories are largely by reporters
  and bloggers from member sites, or
• Citizens trained to be journalists working for
  TC Daily Planet
• Training through workshops open to the community
  members
• Do open it to comments - do not use crowdsourcing
  (buzzword to be defined later)
• Reporters organizations see this as win-win
  Daily Planet gets important stories and content,
  other publications, reporters, organization get
  exposure

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From citizen journalist whose story was published

• I was so excited to learn my story had been
  published in Twin Cities Daily Planet. It was
  great exposure for me since Im just starting out
  as a journalist and am in college planning to
  major in journalism. It was also great that the
  story could be seen by a wider audience than
  Engage Minnesota (the publication where it
  originated) has.

8
What is Locally Grown Northfield?

• Blog/podcast about Northfield, Minnesota,
  established in 2004 by community activist/former
  online community manager for Utne Reader
• Combination of soft news (blog style writing),
  discussion, opinion, video clips of events
• The blog grew out of a community radio show with
  the three of them discussing issues related to
  Northfield
• The other two are the executive director of the
  Northfield Downtown Development Corporation and
  a local business owner
• Blog started soliciting advertising in January
  2009 but largely does not pay at all

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Examples of a Locally Grown Blog Post

• What happened to SNL at Northfield Middle School?
• Council Approves Walinksi as City Administrator
• Snowpiles on Division Street Downtown
• Regular community of followers, many of whom also
  listen to radio show and comment or contribute on
  the blog

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What is Representative Journalism, or RepJ?

• Idea from a blog written by a professor at
  Kennisaw State (and former employee of MN Public
  Radio), Len Witt
• What if blogs could hire and support their own
  reporters to do actual reporting and
  newsgathering for them?
• Received a 50K grant from the Harnisch
  Foundation, a small family foundation

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How was the first RepJ set up to work?

• A blogging community -- in this case LoGrowNo --
  would be given a fulltime reporter
• Salary paid by grant
• May questions Who should this person be?
• Local who already knows Northfield?
• Outsider who can maintain more of an objective
  stance?

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Examples of RepJ reporting

• Business survey reveals some needs met, others
  not
• Will be accompanied by live chat with some of the
  people involved
• Community radio station will have Bonnie on
  Saturdays -- starting with this story -- to
  discuss the story
• She writes about it on her blog
• Community comments and helps with
  stories-in-progress

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More examples

• Story in progress Intern piece
• NTV package a more indepth story in progress
• Uses the comments to follow and improve upon
  stories in a transparent reporting process (she
  notes if it is a story in progress)
• Heres the buzzword again Crowdsourcing

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Crowdsourcing

• Facet of citizen journalism -- the act of a
  citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active
  role in the process of collecting, reporting,
  analyzing and disseminating news and information
  (Bowman Willis, 2003)
• The act taking on a job that is traditionally
  done by a professional and outsourcing it to a
  large group of undefined persons (Howe, 2006)
• Assignment Zero, which used Internet users from
  various walks of life to work as reporters on a
  collaborative news project (Rosen, 2007)

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The Pros and Cons

• PROS
• The greater good and wisdom of the crowd prevails
• People can fact-check one another
• Allows audience to invest in product and
  therefore, the product is more valuable to them
• (Gillmor, 2006)

• CONS
• Expertise, thorough reporting, storytelling and
  ethical grounding is lost
• A thousand monkeys with typewriters is still a
  thousand monkeys with typewriters (no such thing
  as wisdom of the crowd)
• Crowd has agendas
• (Keen, 2007)

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How is this working with RepJ and Locally Grown
Northfield?

• Audience actively participates, Bonnie values
  contributions
• Audience sometimes argues with one another and
  Bonnie over stories
• Thorough coverage of issues and pieces not
  covered by local paper
• Bloggers appreciate added benefit of a reporter
  to enhance their site (did serve as a value-add
  for advertisers)

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Audience as Cultural Producer

• Bourdieu Cultural production - allows a person
  to act within a hierarchy to produce something of
  cultural value, elevates them
• Could this translate to value within sites that
  use citizen journalism?

18
Town Hall Meeting for RepJ, Feb. 2009, in
Northfield

• Many regular commenter/contributors were in
  attendance, also ME of Northfield News, Len Witt,
  Bonnie the reporter
• By and large, feeling was their own contribution
  to Locally Grown Northfield was worthless
• Would not pay for something citizen generated,
  did not see the worth of that
• Would consider paying for a professional to do
  newsgathering, depending on format (Potential
  models Co-op, community garden, public radio),
  but would not pay for a blog

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Comments

• I dont think you should hire a whole bunch
  of bloggers who are just following the (whims) of
  the readers of Locally Grown and the people who
  are always commenting on the stories. Its better
  to have Bonnie, or some other reporter who really
  knows the whole community and the important
  stories.

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Comments

• I definitely dont see the collaborative
  reporting as important here. Its great that we
  have Bonnie, who is a trained journalist who has
  worked in journalism as the person who we can
  count on to make sense of all of this.

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Cultural production/Value

• In general, the feeling of everyone there seemed
  to be that the collaborative aspect of the
  reporting and ability to comment or make
  suggestions was dismissed.
• However, people also were hesitant to discuss
  whether they would pay to have a fulltime
  reporter working for the blog

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The Immediate Future

• Both publications continue to maintain crucial
  community partnerships
• Both utilize digital media technologies to tell
  stories (Twitter, video, podcast, etc.)
• Both publications seek to remain funded
• Both publications seek to remain relevant to
  their communities - TCDP will keep same model,
  Locally Grown will begin to use Spot.us tools and
  has offered freelancers positions

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With regard to cultural production

• The way the citizen journalism is practiced has
  implications for the cultural production value of
  its users
• Editors of both sites strongly value contribution
  of audience/citizens
• Citizens themselves do not always see it, and
  editors also value traditional news values,
  adding another dimension of how not to pay for at
  least some aspects of journalism

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Can cultural production translate into financial
value in local online news?

• Can crowdsourcing translate into crowdfunding?
• Too soon to say with regard to two case studies
  here
• Must pay attention to the correlation between
  cultural production and cultural value

25
Thank you

• stern180_at_umn.edu