Citizen Media: A Progress Report

From Berkman fellow and Director of the Center for Citizen Media, Dan Gillmor...

In my keynote at last month’s OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters’ Forum in Seoul, I was asked to offer a year-on-year progress report on the state of citizen journalism. To sum up:

We’ve come a long way. There’s a growing recognition and appreciation of why citizen journalism matters. Investments, from media organizations and others, are fueling experiments of various kinds. Revenue models are taking early shape. And, most important, there’s a flood of great ideas.

But we have a long, long way to go. We need much more experimentation in journalism and community information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain — and some notable failures are discouraging. Dealing with the issues of trust, credibility and ethics is essential; as are more tools and training, including a dramatically updated notion of media literacy.

I offered 10 major points in my talk, as follows...

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