A four-hour workshop at the University of Guam, which this Saipan Tribune reporter attended, taught media practitioners to explore new sources of news, as the industry itself evolves in today's technological world.
The workshop, held Feb. 9 at the University of Guam's Jesus Leon Guerrero building, was conducted by University of Hawaii's Dr. Tom Brislin.
According to Brislin, there are a myriad of other news sources besides the newspaper and TV news that people could get their news from: Citizen journalism, blogs, message boards, chats, YouTube, and even Myspace. With that are the different kinds of audience and how they obtain the news from their sources.
Citizen journalism, Brislin explained, is public or participatory journalism. It is the act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.”
With places such as blogs and message boards, people are allowed to speculate, to guess what is going on, and their audiences can respond by speaking their mind. With newspaper writing, journalists are only allowed to write what is factual.
“More people, however, still rely on newspapers and television news to get the real story. Although many people respond to blogging and message boards, people rely on the newspapers and television news for the truth,” Brislin said.
Through blogging, though, the truth will come out eventually, he said. As more people touch bases on a particular subject therefore disseminating a multitude of information, “the truth will arise.”
Citizen journalism, Brislin explained, is also known as public or participatory journalism. It is the act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.”
When it comes to news writing, journalists and reporters often think that there should only be one source where they should get their story.
However, Brislin said that another great place of gathering data is through the community members, otherwise known as “crowd-sourcing.”
“Let's use those people out there to feed data. Get the audience to work for you because the government will not talk,” Brislin said.
A question that Brislin posed was if today's media still have room for good journalism.
For many newspapers, “it's about getting the scoop.” The major, most important thing with newspapers is to out-scoop their competing newspapers. However, because of such, many fail to publish correct information. Newspapers feel they can always correct that later just as long as they get the scoop.
To Brislin, that does not make good journalism as it also messes up the newspaper's credibility.
Creativity is another important factor in journalism.
On the worldwide web, many bloggers copy and paste their sources. According to Brislin, that's alright for them to do as everything on the Web belongs to everybody. With newspaper writing, such thing is considered plagiarism. One can be creative provided that one presents facts.
So is journalism technology a fad or it is here to stay? For as long as there people online wanting to speak their minds and people responding to them like “rabid dogs”, blogs will always become available for readers, Brislin said.
However, “the media is the only front to information. We're the elite,” Brislin said.
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