Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Citizen Journalism

Absolutely fantastic summary here of the various forms of "citizen journalism" that covered the Minneapolis bridge collapse from e-strategy's David Erickson. Some of his conclusions on what this means for the future of news media:

* Microblogging services like Twitter are quick response medium and, with their text messaging capabilities, served as a breaking news alert system. Because these services are designed to be used on mobile devices, they are ideal for sending concise, individual facts from the scene. During this crisis they also served as an "I'm okay" medium.
* Citizen Journalists can be surprisingly competent reporters. I was struck by both the volume and the quality of the citizen reports. The eyewitness accounts were compelling with vivid details and more often than not lacked the melodrama to which amateur writing is often suspect. The citizen generated photos and video were equally compelling.
* Is Sentiment Citizen Journalism? A lot of the citizen generated content was a simple expression of emotion. From slide show musical tributes to expressions of grief in discussion and comment forums, the emotional reaction was profuse. While it's understandable, and it certainly does give you a sense of how widely the tragedy effected people, I would not say that content rises to the level of citizen journalism. Unless it is the grief of someone who was directly effected by the disaster, say a firefighter or a wife of a missing person, that type of content does little to provide insight or facts or contribute to the overall truth of the event.
* We need a system to separate the wheat from the chaff. While much of the citizen journalism I consumed was superb, much of it also was not. Because of the volume of generated content, the disparate sources for it, and the varying quality, we need to find some way to bring the quality content to the fore and consolidate it for easy consumption. Maybe that would be a wiki page devoted to that task, or something similar to the aforementioned MNSpeak discussion thread where the participants posted relevant links and quality content accreted as the story ran its course. Perhaps that system should be in the hands of semi-professionals such as the Minnesota Monitor citizen journalism site. All of the above?
* Crowdsourcing citizen journalism. The MNSpeak discussion thread was a remarkable demonstration of collaborative citizen journalism, as thread members contributed bits and pieces of the story to create a far richer and more comprehensive picture than a single reporter could hope to provide. The Star Tribune's open comment thread to a lesser degree provided the same. Wikipedia provides a far more formal approach to collaborative journalism, with news junkies collecting facts from reports on the web or TV or radio or and experts contributing their knowledge to aspects of a given story that might otherwise go unreported for lack of expertise.
* Mainstream media still holds citizen journalism at arms length. With the exception of Minnesota Public Radio, almost all of the mainstream media treated citizen journalists as a resource for reporters to tap for their own reports, rather than treating citizens as co-equals who can tell stories themselves.
* Visual Quality. This aspect of citizen journalism is most clearly evident in the photo journalism. The photos uploaded to Flickr are often of professional quality in terms of clarity as well as subject matter and framing. I was absolutely blown away by the quality of most of the photos. This may be atypical, however, as Minneapolis has a large and thriving artistic community. Maybe this was simply a result of having the good fortune of an abundance of talented photographers in close proximity.

The quality of the video was for the most part, poor by the standards we expect from television coverage. But a few were very good both in terms of clarity, professionalism, and subject matter. The aforementioned citizen video that KSTP TV ran struck me the most for its broadcast quality. I wonder if it was shot with a high definition digital video camera. As prices drop on HD video cameras, we are going to see more and more extremely high quality citizen video reports.
* Flavor and Context. The eyewitness blog posts, the on-the-scene photography, and even the handheld and cell phone videos complete with their jerky motion and blurry, overcompressed images, all contribute far better than the mainstream media, to giving you a more accurate sense of being there. The videos, especially because of their amateur look, gave the viewer a powerful sense of the frantic chaos on the ground.
* Immediacy. Had I been on Twitter a minute or two earlier, I would have known about the bridge collapse sooner than the Star Tribune reported it there. The ability to quickly upload photos and video online and post to blogs and discussion forums, gives an as-it-happens feel that only television can match. But television reporters have to travel to the scene to report. When citizen reporters are present near or at the event when it happens, or even a part of it, with the right tools like an Internet connected cell phone, reporting can occur in real time.
* Technological lags. A major flaw in the dissemination of citizen media is built into some of the distribution platforms, Flickr and YouTube specifically. While you can upload photos or video to them and see the upload display almost immediately on the site, users of the site won't be able to find your content for about 24 hours unless they know exactly where to look. The problem is that there seems to be a day's delay before your content becomes searchable by text or tags. That makes these platforms practically useless as a breaking news medium.

August 7, 2007 | BY JONATHAN DUBE