we the media: the rise of grassroots

dan gillmor of the san jose mercury news gave the closing keynote at the fifteenth acm conference on hypertext and hypermedia in santa cruz, california. these are my annotated notes of his talk and his responses to the audiences’ questions.

journalism is changing

dan’s experience of journalism

the possible effect?

examples of self-assembling journalism

questions:

how does the web avoid becoming cb radio (where everyone is drowned out)?

how do we stay in the moment?

does fact-checking just make better liars? (analogy: antibiotics create antibiotic-resistent germs)

cathy marshall: what is the future of traditional journalism?

how do feedback loops (of grassroots journalism) affect traditional news? (i.e. fake beheading video)

what is the effect of blogging on dan?

4 Comments

I’m interested in the concept of global factchecking….
Namely, it’s interesting that everybody knows that the US government made shit up to gain popular American support for the Iraq war, everybody knew they were making it up as it was happening, yet a great many people in the US went along for the ride. Indeed, many people still believe the lies that were told and continue to parrot them.

So what I’m saying is, global factchecking was in operation, yet the administration was STILL able to pull the wool over the populace’s eyes. It’s crazy. Is it because this country has become so insular, do we just WANT to believe what they tell us?

i wanted to write about this after my series of posts about remembering sept 11 after watching f911.

but i couldn’t seem to condense or articulate this frustration with people who are pissed/skeptical of bush now, but supported him (or just didn’t care) earlier this year.

it is a catch-22. i want to castigate them, (“look what you did”) but they are likely to vote against bush in november. so i can’t really.

Anonymous

damn, that’s some mighty fine organization, kid.

what do you mean, anonymous?

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