03.15.2010 at 3:15 pm | Have your say »

UGC: The future of journalism – or just rumors?

Reporting the news has always been reserved to an elite circle. Often sleep-deprived and caffeine-driven, Journalists have been proudly guarding the news since the first newspaper was published in the 17th century.

But when newspapers and media organizations jumped into the online bandwagon, it is not only important to write effective news leads and headlines; there is a more pressing need to write it now and fast.

That’s where the public often steps in. Citizen journalists, as they are collectively called, often have the main advantage of being at the right place at the right time. They help online news sites deliver news faster by submitting texts, pictures or even videos of events as they happen. The product of such news gathering and reporting is then called, user-generated content (UGC).

[Click on the map below to find out what others  are saying about citizen reporters]

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With the ubiquity of digital cameras in mobile phones and the dawn of faster Internet access, people have become well-equipped to exchange information through ‘tweets’,  comments on discussion groups, or blogs.

And at one point or another, mainstream media has relied on citizen reporters in major news events. On February 28, a day after the earthquake in Chile this year, CNN streamed live the Skype video of American mixed martial artist, BJ Penn who had his camera pointed to the beach of Hilo Bay.

Through Penn’s website , CNN used the video to anticipate the tsunami that was expected to hit the Hawaiian beach that day. Twitter and YouTube became the avenue for angry Iranians to post their protests about the national elections there last year. Their ‘tweets’ became the quotes for most mainstream newspapers.

While this was helpful in news organizations in breaking news stories, most journalists view the emergence of these amateur journalists as an annoyance.

“Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility,” said veteran newsman and 60 Minutes correspondent, Morley Safer after receiving a journalism award in Connecticut last year.

He then added: “I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.”

Safer is not alone in denouncing the need for untrained journalists. In Germany, one of the most respected newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine thinks that UGC will drag the quality of newspapers down.

“Amateur journalists can’t make the level of content that we want to have,” said Cai Tore Philippsen, a senior editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

It’s all about the t(h)rust

UGC is also seen as a tedious endeavor.

The process of verifying and editing stories or facts given by amateur journalists just takes too long a time and too much effort to fit in the news desk’s already shrinking budget.

Much more, journalists have already proven long enough that they are able and willing to do their jobs well. Why reinvent the wheel?

“The biggest issues affecting the use of user-generated content…is the credibility and oversight of the information being provided,” said IT consultant Paul Chin in his 2006 article, ‘The value of user-generated content.’

“A user blog made up of personal opinion and commentary is a far cry from extensively researched and engineered content,” he added.

News reports coming from untrained journalists are more prone to bias than those from professional journalists with amore objective take on events.

Moreover, UGC is often taken as a single account, free from follow-ups that trained journalists are often required to do. And when ordinary citizens begin to assume that they are journalists some key ethical considerations that trained mediamen practice are lost.

In 2005, during the train bombings in London, ‘Justin’ a blogger for PFFF.co.uk and a survivor of the terrorist attack, said some citizen journalists transformed into citizen paparazzi.

“As I stepped out, people with cameraphones vied to try and take pictures of the worst victims. In crisis, some people are cruel,” he wrote.

Chin explained that sometimes, people “feel a greater sense of pride” when they take on the journalists’ role. Instead of being mere spectators, the general publics suddenly feel a gush of passion to report the news, he inferred. But doing so, without any form of restraint, could create more problems than solutions.

During the relief efforts for the victims of twin storms ‘Parma’ and ‘Ketsana’ in the Philippines, ‘Ella’ a young blogger reported that a government agency has been hoarding the donations from various local and international groups in their warehouses.

She claimed to have volunteered in the warehouse at the wake of the storms. She posted several pictures in her blogsite (http://www.ellaganda.com/) showing towering stacks of relief goods and implored others to spread the news that the government has kept the good ‘rotting’ instead of giving them out to the thousands who need them.

Eventually, Filipino journalists asked for the government’s side and found the story misleading even false. Now the government has prepared a suit against her.

With these experiences, journalists more often find themselves treating content from users with a grain of salt.

“In order for UGC to be taken seriously, users have to assume responsibility for what they submit…The biggest detriment to the adoption of UGC as official intranet content is credibility and author bias,” Chin said.

Although several established news organizations have provided platforms to use UGC, they still try to define the line between what is professional and amateurish.

In CNN’s iReport website, citizen reporters to post videos, pictures and stories of events they find newsworthy. But it is evident that CNN created the site to keep its community of citizen reporters faithful to the brand, while not necessarily promising that the content will be used by them right away.

“The site isn’t co-branded with CNN (though there are references to CNN) and isn’t even promoted on CNN.com yet — a clear effort to separate the CNN brand from the unmoderated content on iReport.com,” wrote the citizenjournalist.net.

Users know best

But raw news, content that didn’t get massacred then re-assembled by a team of editors, has one element that exceeds engineered content: Impact.

Paul Pritchard, a 27-year-old native of British Columbia, shot a video showing the Royal Canadian Mountain Police tasering a Polish immigrant back at the Vancouver airport in 2007.

The immigrant died later on. The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression feted him with the Citizen Journalism Award last year for exposing the abuse of the RCMP in tasering individuals.

His expose forced the Canadian government to review its use of tasers.

“The culture of journalism is about getting the truth,” said CJFE president Arnold Amber during the awarding ceremony, “You shone that light in a dark place.”

Can’t we all get along?

Perhaps the solution for bridging the gap between professional and citizen journalists is a change in perspective.

Instead of treating UGC as half-hearted journalism and citizen journalists as a threat, the best way is perhaps think more of the endeavor as a collaboration.

“Citizen journalism, as it pertains to newsgathering, has evolved to be more about collaboration between citizens and journalists than citizens replacing journalist,” said Kathy English, The Star’s public editor who has been a professional journalist for more than 30 years.

English expects the relationship between the journalists and the audience to be more cooperative. After all, it is still the mainstream media who will ultimately decide what goes into next day’s paper or the evening’s news report. Another way to bridge the gap is to provide training for citizen journalists.

In the Philippines, several media organizations have began training members of non-government organizations to gather and write the news for them in the upcoming elections this year.

This would enable small news agencies, with fewer funds to pay for more reporters, to still do their jobs despite the financial obstacles. But ultimately the key element is still verification.

After all, an information that is unverified is simply a rumor whether its is gathered by a professional or amateur journalist.

| Tagged Case Studies, Featured, citizenjouranlism ugc usergeneratedcontent