This Spring, our Public Journalism class at Southern Oregon
University produced a number of insightful works on our blog "Student Matters". The
issues covered ranged from popular entertainment to politics. Overall,
the project was a welcome and exciting exploration into the brave new
world of Internet communication.
Unceremoniously, we approached “blogging” and its environs the
“Blogosphere” with a good bit of trepidation. As a first of its kind
experiment on the SOU campus, our goal was relatively simple –Open up a
conversation on campus about issues that matter to students.
This is what blogging does, for better or worse.
Blogging opens up to the world conversations between students and teachers, students and students, and community and students.
Stephen Downes in the online magazine Educause Review defines educational blogging as a form of personal publishing.
A blog, therefore, is and has always been more than
the online equivalent of a personal journal. Though consisting of
regular (and often dated) updates, the blog adds to the form of the
diary by incorporating the best features of hypertext: the capacity to
link to new and useful resources. But a blog is also characterized by
its reflection of a personal style, and this style may be reflected in
either the writing or the selection of links passed along to readers.
Blogs are the core of what has come to be called personal publishing in an increasingly hyper-staurated world of information.
We explored the potentialities of public journalism through blogging
about our college campus in both theory and practice. We took what we
learned from listening to others in the community that have come before
us. We followed the discourse about blogging and how it can affect
change.
Ultimately, we created the Student Matters blog as an online journal and a space to explore the principles of community-based learning.
Essentially, community-based learning signifies proactive engagement
in problem solving. In this case, students determined that our
community was on campus and that it would generate a sufficient number
of issues worthy of reporting. Some of these issues included, the
Higher One banking system, the search for a new university president,
residence hall and health center policies, free speech on campus, and
other matters students deal with while enrolled in college.
Writing assignments were divided into three categories: journalistic
reportage, opinion and commentary and arts and entertainment reviews.
Right from the start, the biggest obstacle in this class centered
around learning how people define “public journalism.”
In the emerging world of Internet communication, especially in the
Blogosphere, we quickly discovered that there are more questions raised
by the activity than there were answers. Everyone seems to define
public journalism differently.
At the heart of the issues of surrounding public journalism, also
known as participatory or citizen journalism, resides a tension.
Cynthia Care, a student who investigated community-building and
sustainability issues, comments, “Today there is a conflict between
corporate interests and the accessibility of communication, information
and knowledge via the Internet.” The very public nature of blogging,
one that is inherently more personal in tone than practiced by
traditional “objective” or “impartial” journalists, produces a dialect
of incredulity.
Jerry Clarkson eloquently explains the problem with blogging and
public journalism is mostly one of perception. As Clarkson argues:
“Public journalists tend to more activist in their
approach. While this activism role might appear to create a biased
approach and therefore foster trust issues, I believe that it works in
reverse. Once we acknowledge our biases those reading our critiques can
understand our frame of the story and accept the honesty with which we
approach it.”
Care observes that the oft-noted public frustration with corporate media as provided the impetus for public journalism.
In her essay, “The Internet as a Tool for Common Good,” Care
examines the historical context between private and public interests.
She explores the notion of “the commons” as a “set of inherited gifts”
that everyone has access to. Historically, these “inherited gifts” were
assigned to natural resources, but later included social and cultural
gift. It is this second set of “gift” (cultural and social) that the
writer notes as “gifts” of language, art, science, and now, the
Internet. For Care, and many others, the Internet has become a social
and cultural commons, “an inexpensive forum for public expression,
which is easily accessible to independent voices.”
Tensions or conflicts between public and private forms of expression
and reportage are rooted in how people perceive one form over another.
Matt Gemmell, a photojournalism major, defines public journalism as
“any news produced by someone other than a professional journalist.”
Now, the user is faced with the challenge of choice.
During the quarter, students analyzed online stories from the local
newspapers to find that feedback forms on the Internet allow readers to
correct inconsistencies and incongruities of the account.
In one story about a motorcycle accident in front of the University,
comments about the story ranged from eyewitness accounts to the
incident that were not reported in the newspapers, as well as a
correction posted by the sister of the motorcyclist. In this way,
readers could hold the newspaper more accountable on the Internet than
they could in the antecedent traditional print format.
Jeremiah Page sums up the phenomenon by contending, “People can hold
the journalist responsible for accuracy, bias, conventions, and
relevancy. Instead of simply learning about something and being told
about an event we can be part of the solution. This is revolutionary!”
Gemmell points out further by claiming that, “public journalism is redefining the way we think of tradition journalism.”
For Page, “Public journalism takes journalism into a completely new
sphere that has never been possible before. Public journalism has
transformed the recipient into a potential participant.”
Donald Lind, a gradating journalism major, believes, “Today’s media
is easy to dismiss as untrustworthy. But today’s technology can
challenge the press like never before.”
At the same time, William Hastings found that the notion of public
journalism promulgates controversy. “I feel that we are ‘feeling’ our
way through the many [implications] the Internet can have for
journalism, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
One of the analytical frameworks used to explicate blogging in the
course was Robert Putnam’s idea of “social capital”, which builds upon
Metcalfe’s law of the Internet. Metcalfe, who is credited with
developing the Ethernet, believes the number of possible linkages
between users of the Internet grows as the square of the number of
linkages increases. Moreover, Metcalfe’s law states that the community
value of a network of users grows as the square number increases.
Imagine the blogosphere as an enormous shopping mall with millions
of rental shops. Every time the user selects one shop to browse in they
are immediately connected,
indirectly and directly, to all of the others. For Hastings,
“Ultimately, public journalism [on the Internet] allows us to connect
to one another. This is a central process in making change and
broadening … perspective.”
Interconnectivity and social networking, something that is
inherently part of the blogosphere, presented itself several times
during the quarter.
For example, after a student posted a rather pointed criticism of
the financial Higher One banking system, one of the corporation’s
founders responded to the blog. In a surprising act of transparency,
the executive apologized for any problems the student may have had and
encouraged him to follow up if he hadn’t been taken care of soon.
Interestingly, other students began posted comments and complaints
about the banking service to the site.
Although the students’ comments were in no way journalistic in any
traditional sense, the posting could certainly give way to more
investigative reportage in the future. Perhaps, this is what the
executive understands. That if he were to let even the most seemingly
innocuous and obscure blog posts to go unanswered more disgruntlement
may emerge.
On the other hand, perhaps the executive’s concerns were genuine and
sincere, and that his intentions were socially and corporately
responsible. In some respects, the Internet brings journalism back to a
time when writer felt free to lash out at corporations and governments
– back to a time of Nellie Bly, Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, and I.F.
Stone.
As Lind contends, “Instant access to the world has allowed citizens
to take apart news stories that might have been universally accepted a
decade ago.” The dynamic and interactive agency of blogging suggests
how the Internet makes older ways of gathering and using information
obsolete.
Students learned about their own work through the study of Marshall
McLuhan’s four laws of the media, which claim that newer technologies
extend media and make them stronger, reverses some of the older media’s
characteristics, generates new forms of communication and media, and
finally, enhances qualities of media.
The reality many of us are coming to terms with now is that the
future is already here and waiting for us to join in the larger
conversation that public journalism promotes. As Eric Hidle points out,
“With new technology comes the obsolescent of old mediums.” In his
research Hidle discovered that nearly three of every four Americans now
have access to the Internet.
Along with the growth of the Internet comes social networking
Websites, such as MySpace, Friendster, Live Journal, Friendzy, Tribe,
FriendSurfer, PeepsNation, Emode, and others, that continue to command
increasingly larger audiences. In fact social networking websites have
risen 47 percent over the past year and online news sites have risen
accordingly with them. Hidle’s research of bloggers at Southern Oregon
University is significant.
To put it simply: people are online, they are connected
and they are informed. To compare the current state of our student
body with the world would be unfair. Students at Southern Oregon
University are technologically far ahead of the standard citizen.
Every student enrolled in SOU has access to the internet through
local computer labs. And, as of June 13, 2006 1,309 students are
registered to Southern’s facebook.com network and 1,873 students are
registered to Southern’s MySpace.com network.
This is approximately 40 percent of the student body networked with
each other. It can also be reasonably estimated that many students
registered with such sites do not belong to Southern’s groups but do
network with other members who are enrolled in the school.
For educators as well as students, it is important to consider the obvious implications of such statistics.
Teaching and learning is changing with the Internet. Students are by
and large vastly more digitally literate than many of their
instructors. This is a generation that was born to and came of age
online. The Internet and technology, in many cases, appears second
nature for most.
Therefore, setting learning outcomes and educational objective must
be concomitant with student behavior. We have entered a brave new world
of learning where students are increasingly producing creative and
intellectual content for the masses. At this point, there is an
imperative in education to meet students, our future journalists, where
they live – online in cyberspace.
Not only is this important to the current state of higher education
in this country, but this directly applies to incoming students. In a
study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project, more
than 57 percent of the teenagers presently using the Internet have
created personal content in the form of blogs, podcasts, videologs, and
photoblogs.
The study reveals “About 21 million or 87 percent of those ages
12-17 are active on the Internet. “The results highlight that this is a
generation comfortable with content-creating technology. Teens are
eager to share their thoughts, experiences, and creations with the
wider Internet population,” the report concludes.