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…
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