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 - Chapter 5 -
INVITE YOUR AUDIENCE INTO YOUR NEWSROOM
INTRODUCTION
Content is everywhere. Mobile phones, digital cameras, blogs, social networking sites, email, instant messaging, multimedia editing software, etc., all facilitate content creation in ways unimaginable less than two decades ago. The biggest change from two decades ago, however, is that the overwhelming majority of universally accessible content is produced by everyone, everywhere, all the time. Since professional media organizations no longer have a monopoly on easy content production and distribution, they need to learn how best to include amateur material, most commonly known as User-Generated Content (UGC) or Citizen Journalism, into their everyday functions.
 Readers provide coverage for the front page
In March 2007, the Glasgow Evening Times used a photograph taken by a reader on its front page. Reader Paul O’Brien caught the image of a woman being rescued from a river by a military helicopter on his mobile phone and sent it to the Times. The event, which marked the first time the Times had used a reader-submitted photo for its front page, also perfectly demonstrated the way in which breaking news has been a major factor driving newspaper’s use of UGC to expand coverage.
YouTubing the next president
Since 2004, when bloggers covered the presidential campaign for the first time, the amount of blogs – and the resulting scrutiny on the candidates – has increased exponentially. But the advent of video-sharing platforms such as YouTube has added an altogether new dimension to the 2008 American presidential campaign, offering further proof of how citizen journalism is affecting overall media coverage. For George Stephanopoulos, chief Washington correspondent for US broadcaster ABC News, the wall between the two is getting more porous every day. Most significantly, the rise of citizen journalism has put more pressure on political figures, since they are now always in the spotlight. “All the candidates have to pay attention to it,” said Stephanopoulos. “More than ever before, there’s no such thing as an unrecorded moment on the campaign trail, for better or worse.”
CONCLUSION
THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN: UGC ENRICHES THE COMMUNITY
When other editors ask about innovations in The Bakersfield Californian’s news operation, they usually want to know about our Web-first reorganization or our breaking news efforts online, or how all our reporters shoot video. The aspect of innovation that gets the least attention from other journalists — our use of citizen-generated content and our engagement with the community — is perhaps the humblest, but in some ways the most profound.
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