Apologies for the delay in updating. It took a while to gather some information for this entry, I had journalism prac assessment that went all day every day last week AND my boyfriend “cleaned the house” (ie. my textbook has mysteriously disappeared). Ah, life. No respect for academic pursuits. On with the blog!

One of the major elements of Web 2.0, new media or whatever you want to call it is the ease of communication. In my earlier blog entry I talked about produsage. When the material produced relates to the news, it is called citizen journalism.

Bowman and Willis (in Flew, 2008) call citizen journalism “participatory journalism.” They define it as “the act of a citizen…plaing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information.” The purpose is to produce “independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant” news. 

It’s a simple concept  – journalists can’t be everywhere all the time whenever something happens. It’s taking eye-witness accounts one step further, with powerful results. Who would you rather hear information from – the journalist who heard about it or the guy who was actually there, filmed it and put it on the internet?

Korean online news service OhMyNews is often cited as the best example of citizen journalism. OhMyNews writer Claire George talks about the advantages of citizen journalism in her article Reporting at First Hand. Although I don’t agree with everything she says in the article (journalists most certainly do NOT sit around in their offices all day), I do agree that “newspapers do not have infinite resources”. The material citizen journalists produce are resources that can help make news stories more comprehensive.

ABC News Online has fully embraced citizen journalism by adding a contributions section their site, where people can send in tip offs, photos and videos. You can also follow and communicate with radio station 612brisbane on Twitter. Radio host Spencer Howson was a guest lecturer in my Radio and TV class and confessed that he was a “Twitter addict”. 612brisbane provided great local election coverage by getting people to tweet about what was happening at different polling booths and RT (retweeting) that information for others.

So maybe the strongest use for citizen journalism is for local citizens to provide, well, local news.

With that in mind, I interviewed David Manson, who runs a blog called Brisneyland. Brisneyland posts about interesting art, music and other events going on in sleepy old Brisbane town. He also runs a Brisneyland Twitter account.

Q: How did [the Brisbane Blog] get started?

I first tried this idea at the end of 2006, when someone advertised on the Problogger site for people to become “city bloggers” in an international network that would work together. I applied and was accepted, but became ill with depression in mid-2007 and couldn’t continue. Eventually the site brisbaneishome.com was sold by the network to another Brisbane blogger, who hasn’t kept it up to date.

I was feeling frustrated that my illness had stopped me doing this properly, and I’d always thought (ever since I’d had regular access to the Net at home in March 2006) that using the Net to bring people together in a city was a good idea. I still liked the idea of a city blog and decided to start the Brisbane Blog and see if I could keep it running as a “What’s On” guide.

Q: Where do you get information to put up on the blog?

Hundreds of places! To be honest I couldn’t tell you how I first heard of most of the places I check for information. I listen to 4ZZZ to hear local bands and write about their upcoming gigs, and I also check Rave Magazines “newswire”, where pretty much anyone can submit a media release, so there’s lots of info there.

I have a friend who’s fairly busy in the arts scene and she sometimes sends me emails about new events that are coming up. I’ve found out about a couple of good galleries from her (including one in West End that hires itself out for one-week shows for $700, which I like because it’s a bit grass-roots).

About a year and a half ago I got seriously into networking on Twitter, following pretty much everyone I could who was in Brisbane. I had an idea that people on Twitter would turn out to be quite creative and that was right – I’ve got several ideas for stories recently directly from stuff people I’m following have said on Twitter.

Some of my source material comes from photos people have published on Flickr or videos they’ve made and put on YouTube. For instance, the night The Who were in town recently-ish, there were photos and videos of the performance up very quickly, and I was able to republish them together as a story. I want to do this sort of thing more often, showing my readers and followers on Twitter what other people are doing.

I also have lists of nine film festivals, seven art galleries, various festivals and all sorts of events from the Redcliffe KiteFest to what people are doing on the day of the Superbowl. All these things I need to check every so often and write a story on are stored in an online to-do list manager called Remember The Milk, which I find useful for managing the amount of info I need to publish once a weekday (which is my goal).

Q: What kind of response have you gotten from visitors?

Mostly, they have been pretty quiet. The blog’s had maybe 7 000 visitors but since January this year there’s been 39 comments on the blog (inlcuding ones from me replying to people).

But the roller-derby post I put up last week has got 7 comments apart from mine, and a fair bit of traffic. That’s shown me that I need to keep on pushing with interesting stories and I’ll come across other ones that are popular and get people commenting.

Q: What do you like about blogging?

Most of all, I like the chance to compete in the same league as major media outlets like the Courier Mail and the Brisbane Times – certainly not on equal terms, but on terms that give me a chance of making a living out of this. My ad revenue so far is laughable – I’ll need to increase my traffic several hundred times to even be close to making a living – but I have the chance to either do that, or get myself employed under conditions that suit me, because my blog demonstrates my skills and experience.

The other thing I really like is finding out just how many creative and interesting people there are in Brisbane who like making things happen. I was sure these people were out there from the day I started blogging, and I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity to shape the world right here, right now.

On a personal note, I find Brisneyland to be much more refreshing than other local “what’s on” publications. There’s definitely a niche market for locals who are bored to death of being told by glossy magazines to go drink overpriced lattes, eat obscure French food made by a world master chef by the river or buy ridiculous-looking designer clothing that no one around here can actually afford to wear. Some people’s idea of “culture” actually includes art, music, history and actually having fun when you sip your reasonably priced cup of caffeine instead of boredly staring at the poo-green river and wishing you were in Melbourne instead.

Sorry about the rant there, but what I’m trying to say is that Brisneyland shows the strengths of citizen journalism – providing information that media producers lack. If citizen journalism is ”independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant”, then Brisneyland ticks all the boxes.

Reference:

Flew, T. 2008. New Media: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.