Tsunami and Citizen Journalism's First Draft

I was getting ready to write a long piece about the South Asia catastrophe's effect on citizen journalism, when the Poynter Institute's Steve Outing called to discuss it for a piece he was writing. He quoted me at length in his piece, and captured the important points. I called the tsunami horror a turning point, because it brought the grassroots front and center in an even more powerful way than occurred on and after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Read Steve's piece here.

I'd add this: We used to call mainstream journalism the "first draft of history." Now, I'd argue, much of that first draft is being written by citizen journalists. And what they're telling us is powerful indeed.

Comments

[PXLated]

Very good article. Thanks for the link Dan!

[paul]

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/paul/archive/2004/12/31/40122.aspx

[Shelley]

You're kidding, right?

Dan, weblogging and so-called citizen jouralism had no impact on this event. Not one bit. We didn't cover it better, we didn't provide more information, we didn't lead the collection of funds, we didn't even collect the highest number of personal stories, videos, and photos... how can you possibly say that this brought the grassroots front and center?

Events of this nature take a little group like us and just shove us out of the way.

[degustibus]

After initial expressions of grief and contributions, the meanspirited christians got into it, and now all I see is end times and "they had it coming".......