As I embarked upon the task of assessing and participating in citizen journalism this week, I chose to focus on the citizen Web newspaper Helium.
First of all, what exactly is Helium? Well, according to its mission statement, “Helium is also a knowledge co-operative where our writers are also our editors who read and rate every article on the site.” I found this interesting, as a “co-op” is not the typical format of a traditional newspaper. Additionally, nowhere are the words “online newspaper” used in the description. Peculiar?
Before writing any content for the site, I thought it best to troll around a bit in order to gauge the site’s norms with relation to journalistic style, format and classification. As an alumnus of Katy Culver’s J202 (who could forget those weekly quizzes) and J335, I by no means claim to be a good reporter, but think I have been sufficiently trained to recognize the makings of a good lead and appreciate objective reporting. So, alas, you could say I was a bit surprised when I found the norms of Helium to be incongruent with those of traditional journalism and reporting.
How were they different? First of all, most of the articles, even the news pieces, lacked sufficient quotes. Rarely were experts or research ever directly sighted to lend support to arguments. Secondly, almost every article, even those falling under the “news” or “politics” tabs is highly editorialized.
How were they different? First of all, most of the articles, even the news pieces, lacked sufficient quotes. Rarely were experts or research ever directly sighted to lend support to arguments. Secondly, almost every article, even those falling under the “news” or “politics” tabs is highly editorialized.
Here are some excerpts from stories under the “news” or “politics” tab which I use as evidence of this trend:
From an article on the front page of the politics/news issues section titled “What Would be the Most Dramatic Difference, in Terms of U.S. Foreign Policy between a President John McCain and a President Barack Obama”
“Foreign Policy would be vastly different under the mature leadership of John McCain”
“As a member of a military family, I would trust McCain on his analysis of the Iraq conflict, but his lack of Foreign Policy experience is worrisome”
On another article of the same title:
“The difference between those two men would be and is so glaring, it defies the imagination!”
And these are just excerpts from the “news” articles. The editorializing is even more aggressive in articles under the “religion and spirituality”, “education” and “technology” tabs.
So, my assessment of the Web site is that, it is not so much a traditional journalism forum (what madisoncommons.com was perhaps striving to be), but rather an online forum where interested participants can litter their brain droppings. You don’t have to pass a test to gain access to rating or writing – just the will power and an email account. Everyone from Perez Hilton to Anderson Cooper to me is invited to contribute.
So, my assessment of the Web site is that, it is not so much a traditional journalism forum (what madisoncommons.com was perhaps striving to be), but rather an online forum where interested participants can litter their brain droppings. You don’t have to pass a test to gain access to rating or writing – just the will power and an email account. Everyone from Perez Hilton to Anderson Cooper to me is invited to contribute.
To me, the articles mostly read more like blog posts than news or feature stories - they are editorialized, based on second hand sourcing and not necessarily “breaking” news. That being said, I decided to write my own article in a similar format. On Sunday, my dad emailed me a cartoon from the New Yorker (posted below) which I really found relevant to everything we have been talking about in class. I used it as inspiration for my Helium piece, which I posted under the “Technology” tab of the Web site.
Something I found difficult/annoying about Helium is that you cannot just submit an article with a title attached. You have to add to an existing title (which probably already has a thread of articles written about it) or, submit a title selection and wait for it to appear. In my opinion, this only furthers the bloggyness of the site. If people were writing breaking news stories, it would seem incongruent to start a thread on an in-the-moment headline. The other thing I found annoying is that after posting my article, I was forced to compare and rate about 912.8 (approximation) articles. I understand that the Web site does this to thwart post-and-runs (people who post on the site but don’t take the time to read others) and keep the rating system in place. But, I just ended up turning off my computer because it asked me to read too many.
So, after my experience, I understand why Helium does not call itself an “online newspaper”. Because it isn’t. So what is it? I would call it a market place of ideas. It facilitates discussion, flow of information, and cognitive dissonance. It keeps people questioning, learning, writing and debating. So, I’m definitely in favor of it. However, I don’t know if we should call it “citizen journalism”. Journalism is a profession defined by and anchored in its objectivity (I interned for a journalist two summers ago who won’t even vote). As we have seen, Helium articles aren’t really objective, nor do they adhere to the stylistic and content principles of traditional reporting. So, while I think Helium and other similar marketplaces of ideas are certainly beneficial for our culture and society, I am wary of people who call it journalism. I think blurring the line between citizen commentary and unbiased report is a dangerous rabbit hole to jump down. But, it is one, I fear, we may already have begun to descend. I mean, I did hear Giuliana Rancic of E! News call herself a reporter the other night…
here's my article:
After being so inticed by the commic inserted in Sara's blog post, I felt compelled to read her article on the negative aspect of text messages.
ReplyDeleteThe phenomenon texting has become amazes me. I understand the point of it in contexts like Libraries, where talking out loud would be inappropriate, but it many other settings texting doesn't even make sense: you have to pay an extra fee for it and it takes longer to have a conversation. In some ways it seems like we've taken a step back - back to the days of emails when we actually have to type what we wanted to say.
But is it the anonymity factor that draws us to such messages? I think we've all been a bit more "balls-y" via text messages than we ever would be over the phone. Why is that we become more daring in a message that can be kept as evidence instead of in real-time conversations that end as soon as we hang up?
When I read these two posts, I couldn't help comparing Helium and Madison Commons. It looks like a big difference between the two, like what Sara pointed out, is that the former doesn't seem to try to maintain the kind of professionalism that traditional journalism highly values whereas the latter still wants to keep it to some extent.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Helium has attracted more users than Madison Commons to make contributions (according to Sara, she had to rate another 900 articles). At first, I thought the number of people itself shouldn't be the criterion in judging how successful a website is, especially when many of the posts on Helium are somewhat biased. But on my second thought, I feel that it's still an important indicator. After all, the whole point of having citizen journalism or holding a hyperlocal website is to have citizens share what they know and care about, and hopefully inform other residents of such info as well as to generate communication and interaction. I feel that this goal can not be reached without sufficient users and visitors.
So maybe it's a good thing to liberate the limitations in doing citizen journalism (i.e., forget about professionalism)? If there are biased posts, it might actually trigger different voices and thus start some kind of communication? But at the same time, is it possible that one voice starts to dominate the forum and then start to create chamber effects?
Interesting! I'm pretty shocked that "article" must be submitted under pre-existing headings! That must severely cut down on the range of topics. I agree that the site looks much more like a blog than an online newspapers. The topics are much more "fluffy" than typical newspaper sites. Creative writing... celebrations and holidays... hobbies and games... is there any actual substance on the site (besides Sara's wonderful article)?
ReplyDeleteLike Chia-Chen, through out this entire post I kept comparing Helium to Madison Commons and I feel like a truly successful citizen journalism site would fall somewhere in the middle of these two. Helium has many things Madison Commons desires - recency, active participation, and a great flow of ideas. On the other hand, Madison Commons possesses something Helium needs to be more accurately considered a citizen journalism site - credibility.
ReplyDeleteWhile Madison Commons has an extensive journalism program to ensure all its articles meet the standard of high quality journalism, the difficulty and hoops people need to jump through just to post a simple article repels many people from the site. While Helium seems to be a great site where people can post freely and share their thoughts and ideas with the public like Sara expressed in her post, it can not exactly be called citizen journalism due to the fact that it is not always living up to journalism standards. That being said, I think a happy medium between these sites would make for a really great journalism site.
Aside from these things, I am more of a fan of Helium just because it seems to be more up-to-date more interesting and more interactive. When people can post comments or litter their minds as these please as Sara said, it really does promote better overall conversation and interaction. Overall I agree with Sara's pros and cons of the site and found her post to be a very accurate assessment of the site.
I think that this is an interesting way to approach citizen journalism. Like sara has stated it is not an online newspaper, which the website never alludes to. However, it is more a blog or a place where people can come together and share their ideas. Like we spoke about last week, this is similar to an online community. It is a place for people who like to share their thoughts and opinions with other people. It allowed them to gain the large network with out actually having to know people.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to comment to Sara that you did not have to rate articles after the submission process. I thought that I had to rate articles but some of the writing pieces were so bad I exited out of the screen with a defeatist attitude. However, my article was posted even though I only rated 2 articles. I believe after the submission process, the site directs you to the rating portion of the site to deter, like you said, the post and runners.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the Web site feels more like a blog. The lack of sufficient evidence to support claims in the articles shows that the writers are not necessarily journalists.
Katie, You can post your own title but you have to "submit" a new title idea. Since I did not know how long it would take for my new 'title' to be approved, I chose to shove my article into one of the pre-existing categories.