"Supermedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World"

After reading the assigned articles and Charlie Beckett’s “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World,” the solution to revamping journalism for this generation is through harnessing user-generated content. The fervor in which college and high school students text-message, Tweet and log in to Facebook daily is phenomenal. Facebook statuses can inspire news stories- the trouble is linking the citizen journalist to a publication and finding a way to pay for it and turn a profit. Community forums and blogs provide feedback from people who don’t insist on being paid, so it will be cheap for newspapers to hire these volunteer writers. Beckett was right in writing that readers can be divided into four groups: traditional writers of letters to the editor; the ones who take it to the next level with heavy-duty blogging; the virtually passive people who want packaged news delivered to them; and the social users who will consume news and want to provide content and interaction with the news flow.
According to Beckett, Networked Journalism has three benefits for engaging the “former audience”: it brings the audience back to the process, it brings content to the process and it brings moral and political value to the process. Marketing and research is wasted on targeting hard-to-reach audiences, when there’s a whole blogosphere of eager citizen journalists just waiting to contribute. However, sifting through these postings and story ideas requires staff. Not everyone’s contribution will be useful, but hopefully every post will play a part in the online conversation. Even the bad ideas can generate content that may turn into something useful. Message boards are a great medium for this. Staffers at an online paper can skim through message boards and see which comments are receiving the most hits, instead of having a freelance editor sifting through e-mails of proposed stories.
It is impossible to ignore the biggest concern with user-generated content. No publication wants to rely on amateurs who know nothing about media literacy. However, by recognizing members of the public as part of the publication, newspapers can promote writer accountability. Writers will want to do a better job if they are forced to claim ownership of what they write (and live under the same media laws). For example, when Wikipedia first came out, maybe people, especially college professors, questioned its accuracy. Example after example popped up of facts that were wrong and things that made it onto the site that were completely irrelevant. But now, more college professors are saying Wikipedia is a great starting point for research. Yes, mistakes are made, but the same is true when newspapers mess up and run a correction, so it should not stop amateurs from contributing what they know. The more brains working toward the same effort, the better.
Although embracing amateur writers as part of a publication may help, nothing is for sure. Several sources in Beckett’s book argue that old media were the gatekeepers of facts, and they cannot ignore the fact that some people like to make things up to gain attention. The recent Balloon Boy incident is a perfect example of amateur reporters looking for fame, rather than the truth. Despite all signs that the little boy was not inside the balloon, the video, shot by amateur reporters, spread to news channels across the nation and alerted the nation. It is sad that the officials involved, who were trying to do their job and save a life, were actually spoofed on national television by a greedy family.
I think the biggest reason for the Balloon Boy incident was that every news channel couldn’t be physically there to cover the story, and they didn’t want to be the only channel not covering the story, so they fell for it. However, this reflects a change in media. Newspapers cannot expect to do all the reporting by themselves. The world is too global, their staff is too small and budget cuts have hit them hard. This is why it is important to collaborate with other publications. Some Web sites, especially online-only sites, link to other papers’ coverage of stories, instead of wasting resources to cover the event itself. Although this lessens competition between publications, I think it is a great idea. It’s simply a modified version of the Associated Press. Because production costs are falling (because online media and citizen journalists are cheap), competition is increasing and profits are threatened. Newspapers need to do less to do more now. If they remain stubborn and try to do everything on their own, their demise will come even faster.
Collaboration between the public and media is even harder in the Editorial sections. There will always be a reader who thinks they know more than a columnist, and will let the columnist know. This used to be done through anonymous letters to the editor, but now blogging allows the “constructive” criticism to be posted directly under the column. A code of conduct needs to be set for the public, as well as the journalists, and it is the editors’ job to moderate all content without limiting freedom of speech. All opinions are valid, as long as they are expressed in a respectful manner and attempt to contribute to the conversation. Arrogance plays a huge part in the criticisms, and part of Networked Journalists’ new feats is dealing with how up close and personal the public can get to them online.
The public can use search engines like Google to hone in on the articles they want to discuss and criticize, which is both good and bad. Google has become a super force to be reckoned with, and while I agree with Beckett that Google News is a wonderful source of news, I feel the same way about how the search engine returns results. The top results on Google are not the sites searched for the most by the public, but rather are the Web site that pay Google the most. This pricing structure limits access to markets and denies the public choice and information. However, without the revenue from Google’s sponsors, the search engine that millions of people use daily, would struggle to exist. It is a necessary hurdle for journalists.
Overall, I think Beckett offered some really optimistic suggestions for solving journalism's current problems. However, I feel he left out how most of these things will be paid for and actually put into actions. He idealized the situation.
Also, it was sad to see how many grammatical errors the book contained. I think this is very ironic, because it reflects the lack of resources authors have nowadays for even simple things like editing copy.