Bill Doskoch: Media, BPS*, Film, Minutiae

The semantic problems surrounding the words ‘journalist’ and ‘journalism’

Author and journalism academic Dan Gillmor asks whether the words “journalist” and “journalism” apply in a world when everyone is capable of creating content.

From Salon, posted Aug. 26:

As digital media become ubiquitous and more and more of us communicate and collaborate online, every person is capable of doing something that has journalistic value. Quite reasonably, relatively few of these folks imagine themselves as journalists, and they’d laugh if you called them one.

Suppose you spot a couple of items online that you want me and other people interested in, say, folk music to see. You forward the links, along with short excerpts and a brief comment explaining why these items are worthwhile, to a mail list. If I tell you, “That was an act of journalism: You curated, aggregated, wrote commentary and created meta-data,” your response, appropriately, will be, “Huh? I was just forwarding some links.”

For me, the problem is that Gillmor is trying to define the act of journalism so widely as to include virtually every act of communication.

Somewhat strangely, Gillmor didn’t provide a link to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s Principles of Journalism. I’ll provide a broad outline:

• journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
• its first loyalty is to citizens
• its essence is a discipline of verification
• its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
• it must serve as an independent monitor of power
• it must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
• it must strive to make the significant interesting and accessible
• it must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
• its practitioners must be allowed to practice their personal conscience

It would seem to me if you’re doing all that for your fellow citizens and wider community, then you’re doing journalism. If you’re jotting off a few links to your buds? Don’t think so.

Gillmor — who has a new book coming out this fall, Mediactive* — confesses he doesn’t even like the word journalist:

* Gillmor spoke at a 2004 conference in Toronto where he gave a fantastic talk. He signed my copy of his first book, We The Media

I share some disdain for the word. When I was a reporter I called myself a reporter. When I was a columnist I called myself a columnist. Calling myself a journalist, which I did from time to time, tended to make me feel like I was pretending to a higher role than the craft, however vital and honorable it may be, merited.

Great. A journalism academic who doesn’t even like the word journalist.

Frankly, I think ”journalist” does apply. Whether you’re a reporter, editor, columnist, professor or news photographer, you’re part of the same craft. You should have the same core values. And if you aspire to be a citizen journalist, you should also ascribe to those values.

Gillmor talks a bit about what is journalism — again, without referencing the PEJ’s principles of journalism.

Note this odd example:

On Christmas Day 2009, as a blizzard pounded Oklahoma, its residents posted local road conditions and information about where stranded travelers could hunker down with local families. If that can’t be called journalism in a traditional sense, it’s certainly more useful to a family in a sedan on the side of the road than any roundup story by a news organization during the storm.

That’s just silly. Of course people sharing information independently about road conditions and whatnot is a good thing and more helpful in the moment than a round-up story. New technologies such as social media and smartphones make it easier than ever to share such information in real time with both friends and strangers.

 But were broadcast outlets and newspapers in the storm zone doing round-up stories or providing real-time coverage on air or online? Were they providing the big-picture information that perhaps the neighbours didn’t have — such as how long the storm might last and how intense it would be? Were they amplifying highly local information that could be of value to others? Gillmor doesn’t say.

The nearest comparable event for me is the Toronto blackout of Aug. 14, 2003. My neighbours couldn’t tell me how long the power would be out — my key question that day. My computer and cellphone were dead because of the blackout. But my trusty, battery-powered transistor radio that I take fishing kept news flowing to me (and my neighbours, who didn’t have one of their own).

This past summer, we had one major (mercifully short) blackout and a minor earthquake in Toronto. In both instances, I used Twitter during my work for ctvtoronto.ca to crowdsource the extent of the problems and give some flavour of how people were being affected.

But if people in one narrowly defined area only had questions or information needs specific to that area, there would have been only so much I could do for them.

Here’s how Gillmor finishes up:

We are all creating media. Any one of us can, and many of us will, commit an act of journalism. We may contribute to the journalism ecosystem once, rarely, frequently or constantly. How we deal with these contributions — deciding to try one, what we do with what we’ve created, and how the rest of us use what’s been created — is going to be complex and evolving. But it’s the future.

Back to the earlier issue: Do we need a new name for the modern media creators, specifically the ones who are creating information of value to communities (of geography or interest)? I’d like to find one but I confess I’m not having an easy time of it.

“Creator” has its own baggage. “Participant” and “collaborator” and “contributor” don’t seem exactly right, either.

If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

If I painted a picture once upon a time, am I a painter? I ran for editor-in-chief of my student newspaper once — an elected office of sorts (lost). Does that make me an (unsuccessful) politician? Needless to say, I don’t call myself a painter or politician.

But five days a week, on CTV News’s dime, I work as an online journalist at ctvtoronto.ca. And I think like a journalist all the time. I’m proud to be a journalist.

During my personal time, I sometimes take photos of Toronto buildings and cultural events such as Kensington Market’s Pedestrian Sundays. Was I doing photojournalism on Sunday? I don’t think so. I was sharing with my Twitter followers, but I wouldn’t describe myself as doing journalism this past afternoon because there was no journalistic purpose to my activity. I could have easily posted the images to my Facebook account, which is much more of a personal stream.

On July 11 (a day off), I was being an amateur photojournalist. I hustled up to Bathurst Street and College Street West after the World Cup final ended because I knew that’s where fans of Spain’s winning soccer team would be partying (Plaza Flamingo was a home bar for Spain’s fans).

I snapped a few photos with my iPhone that I think helped tell the story of the day:

• fans on top of the streetcar (sent that in to CTV.ca)
• a TTC supervisor patiently talking people into leaving the streetcar’s roof (used that in a news story too)
• a wobbly fan temporarily handcuffed (and that one)

I believe I was being a journalist to my Twitter audience and to CTV.ca visitors because I saw this as a news event that should be recorded and reported upon.  I was doing it for the wider community, not a narrow group of neighbours or friends, because I thought people should know. A World Cup victory is a major milestone for an ethnic community (ask the older Italians walking around on St. Clair Avenue West in 2006, when Italy last won the World Cup. Many were carrying photos of the 1982 World Cup-winning team).

Now take this photo from Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue on June 26, the infamous G20 Summit weekend.  How many journalists are in the picture below?

I referred to it in this July 7 post: Ira Basen on when everyone’s a journalist. That post has relevance to this discussion.

If the people in the above photo were there with:

•  journalistic purpose in mind
• were doing it to honestly inform the wider community

then they were doing citizen journalism. Otherwise, they were either camera-wielding bystanders or riot tourists.

I sympathize with the difficulties Gillmor is having in coming up with appropriate terminology for our times, but he shouldn’t lose sight of the fact there still are pro journalists doing great journalism — work that can’t necessarily be duplicated by just anyone walking in off the street. I think he would be doing a disservice to them by saying there’s no difference between someone who has the skills to carry out a complex, six-month-long investigative reporting project that helps spur needed change in their community and someone who tweeted once about a local speed trap.

I’ll close with a recycled old bit of snark: Just because I can put a bandage on someone doesn’t mean I can or should call myself a citizen paramedic. So just because you’ve done one act of citizen reportage doesn’t mean you can or should call yourself a journalist* (even if it’s a spectacular one).

* Back in the late 1980s, I attended a talk by Brian McKenna, who helped found the fifth estate, the investigative CBC TV show. He said it was easier to teach filmmaking to journalists than journalism to filmmakers.

I should also note that I wrote the following in my July 4 post Journalists, protests and Blatchford:

If you’re prepared to run the risk of personal harm to document a major event in a community’s history, I tip my hat to you.

Communities benefit by the good work of pro journalists, but the new tools for the gathering and sharing of journalistic information have opened up exciting new possibilities for the involvement of the wider public. I’m for embracing those opportunities. The semantics can be worked out later.

Tags: citizen journalism, j-ethics, journalism, news media, online journalism, social media