Citizen Journalism From 'boingboing'

Dan Gillmor explains "citizen journalism"
Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 2, 2006 4:47 AM |

Dan Gillmor, the hero and lion of "citizen journalism," gave a tremendous speech on what participatory, 21st-century news-reporting can and should look like at at Columbia's Hearst New Media Lecture, and he's posted the transcript on his blog:
This is called a "New Media" lecture. Two items: First, We are moving at light speed to a time when the expression "new media" will too many words, and we'll drop the new part; it'll just be media. I'm glad to see this school and the organizations that hire its graduates are adopting at least some of tomorrow's techniques more quickly than I predicted. That's good. Forward-looking folks are aware that there's no alternative, not to mention the fact that the journalism will benefit.
...I was calling attention to another reality of tomorrow's journalism. In a craft that's shifting from lecture to conversation, the publication (or broadcast or whatever) is not The End. It is somewhere in the middle of an emergent system in which we all can keep learning, and teaching.

This is increasingly doable in part because of what has changed so much for so many: the collision of technology and media, which has helped democratize communications and is turning traditional notions of journalism in new directions. Now, I don't mean democratization so much as in the sense of voting -- though collective community thinking is an intriguing and valuable part of what's coming. I mean it in the sense of wide participation.