Not just “in” London, but for London — that seems to be the underlying purpose of Dan Brown’s “challenge to London bloggers“:
I’m challenging London bloggers to do their own original reporting. [...]
If you believe, as I do, that this city deserves excellent journalism, it’s time to lead by example.
I think we’ll all be better for it.
He’s calling out local bloggers for complaining about the (purportedly insufficient) coverage of particular stories by The London Free Press.
But then again I’m not sure if bloggers are doing most of the complaining about the paper. There are far more complainers than bloggers, and London’s blogging community seems mostly ambivalent. From what I’ve read from bloggers, the complaints are limited to a minority – including Greg at From My Bottom Step, Butch at Alt London, The London Fog, Sonny Drysdale, and yours truly.
I don’t expect all the folks involved with London Commons, London Indymedia, or the new Iconoclast Media to agree with everything The London Free Press writes or does either, but I haven’t seen the same kind of systematic and sustained criticism as from the aforementioned.
[Know of any more London blogs, indie media outlets, collectives, etc?]
Now if you look at the list individually, Greg Fowler (for example) is very active and generates his fair share of news from around the community to post on From My Bottom Step — a blog that I’d suggest as a local model for people new to the scene. There aren’t a lot of “stories” there but he certainly gets out and observes things happening at City Hall and neighbourhood meetings first-hand — and reports his impressions… and opinions, no doubt.
For my part, you can’t say I don’t produce original content. Just because I’m not doing in-person on-the-ground reporting doesn’t mean I’m not researching and “reporting” via primary sources – in an academic, bibliophilic sense more suited to my personality (not so much in this post, maybe).
And check out the Northeastender, a community-oriented site with micro-local news and events listings.
And London Commons is a great place to find news about events and initiatives a little outside the mainstream, via real Londoners sharing their passions and interests.
And new projects sprout every month…
It’s an ecology. We all have our niche. As Dan keeps saying, “Let a thousand flowers bloom!” And as I wrote a while ago:
There’s plenty of room for storytellers, analysts, ranters, essayists, poets, pedants, philosophers, preachers, researchers, obscurantists, tattle-tales, copy-cats, know-it-alls, mavens, teachers, performers, uplifters, criticizers, reporters, guides, and more. If you love breaking news, break news. If you love narratives, compose narratives. If you love stirring the pot, stir the pot. If you love solving problems, solve problems… Out of all of this, a few attempts will ultimately become huge successes, most will not…
While most blogs are not “successful” (as in not widely read, and certainly not lucrative), by getting at least a little more involved we put ourselves in a position to be ready to report something when a story comes to us.
Here I’ll quote Bill Deys — local social media impressario (check out PodCamp London and BlogLDN) – commenting on Dan’s post: “if time allows and I see a story I totally will…”
That’s what citizen journalism is to me. We shouldn’t expect it to be a bunch of dilettantes and ambulance-chasers beating the bushes for precious scoops. It’s about ordinary people simply having the means and interest to share experiences and stories that come to us.
E.g. I’ve enjoyed some entertaining accounts of first-hand experiences from Phronk, Kevin Van Lierop, Gord Harrison, evilflu, Adam Kantor, Five Blondes, Sean Twist… more I’m forgetting or haven’t noticed yet… and hat tip to Titus Ferguson for pointing to the Blogger/PodCaster Meetup that got me involved in this to begin with.
[Update: I've added a few of these links in the hours since originally posting, as I keep remembering people I should have included. I'm not usually so liberal about changing a post so long after publishing but in this case the upside is good for everyone and there's no downside -- other than making me look a little negligent on my first edition.]
I think this initiative will be most productive if our priority is to nudge a lot more people into each doing a little bit more…
That means actively commenting and linking — not just on Facebook albums from someone’s birthday party (though that’s a perfect way to initiate and maintain the spirit), but on stories and issues that affect our community, our country, and our world more generally and permanently.
Democracy isn’t just about voting, it’s about having a voice in the conversation around us – an articulate voice with which to render opinions more objective and knowledge more sociable.
Then cultivate a specialty — preferably something you’re willing and able to try mastering (as in being better at, or more knowledgeable in, than anyone else) — even if it’s simply about mastering a consistent style or attitude.
It’s important to develop a cohesive yet dynamic network, and networks need a complex sets of affinities (and aversions) to work — composed of concrete, identifiable relations between individuals and among groups (or tribes).
Even if you’re not really into the business of opinions, decisions, and expertise, eventually we’ll each have our turn playing a part in a big story — or at least adjecent to it — and we have a responsibility to keep an account of it as accurately and generatively as we can. That starts with people texting or tweeting and documenting (e.g. with photos or video) breaking events so that information can cascade quickly to people with more professional resources to carry on with the account.
Hopefully it can continue to progress beyond that — but to where, from here, we can’t really know yet…
Here, more established bloggers have a responsibility as role models, mavens, recruiters, and connectors: getting more people involved and passionate about sharing pertinant experiences.
Earlier in this post it might have seemed like I was trying to get us all excused from Dan’s challenge – not the case at all.
Who else is in a position to nudge the crowd to adopt social media, if not the people already doing social media?
And in fact I think we haven’t been doing nearly enough. I’m all for taking up Dan’s challenge…
{ 7 comments }
Sheesh, you’re putting me to shame. You said I should have written a column on my challenge, and you’re probably right. I just wanted to get it out there. Next time I’ll try to put more thought into it, as you have done. In the meantime, I seem to have rattled some cages, which is exactly what I wanted to do. Let’s get talking about this. I believe the key to generating traffic is with original content, so that’s where I’m coming from. Competition raises everyone’s game, so in the end we all benefit.
Thanks Dan. All of us here at brianfrank.ca are in total agreement with the need for competition and original content.
As for “putting more thought into it,” I didn’t really do much. This actually started as a comment on your blog — a response to Bill’s comment that I quoted here. It got too long so I pasted it in here and kept typing…
The stuff about London blogs I’ve been meaning to write for months (procrastination pays off sometimes), so it was just there ready to go; and the stuff about democracy and tribes and nudges and dynamic networks and “media ecologies” (it should have been “ecosystems” now that I think about it) I’ve been writing over and over and over again in different ways for a while.
You definitely did some cage rattling, waking people up who seem to be silently reading along but not participating as actively. You’re carrying the biggest stick for doing that at this point so keep it up.
Well said, both you and Dan Brown. With the internet, there’s no reason that everyone with something worth writing shouldn’t write it. Anyone with something to say and a few minutes of time to say it can put something out there that the whole city (and indeed the whole world) can access. Competition for readers, and ad dollars (if you’re into that sort of thing) will make everyone better, and let the best ones rise to the top.
Perfectly put Phronk… But what I can’t figure out — and what we need to address — is why more people don’t participate already…
Brian.
I think more people don’t participate already because they don’t think that anyone else would care to hear what they have to say or that they may feel stupid in saying it.
Obviously neither of these are the case but it is still hard getting people over that initial “hump” and get them started, even with the smallest bit of participation.
Perhaps it is the responsibility for those of us who already participate to make it easier and more inviting for others to do so.
Good point Kevin. I think that’s exactly right — we gotta level out the little gaps that some of us leaped over (or maybe stumbled over) with uncommon enthusiasm.
I’m thinking the big leap happens when the technology is good enough it fades into the background and we don’t even talk about it anymore — so we’re not, like, “oh you gotta try such and such…” [which is a lot of fun for a few of us right now] but we’re simply, like, yo…..
Obviously there is more to be thought and said on the subject…
And in the mean time we have to keep trying and recommending new technology and software and services and platforms every day (for which I’m grateful to you and Bill and everyone else for Twittering and blogging about the stuff and keeping me in the loop).
Brian.
I cant remember if I have sent you these two links before or not, but speaking of technology for this sort of thing I thought you might find the following useful:
http://elvery.net/drzax/more-things/wordpress-footnotes-plugin/
http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }