2010 August — AEJMC Hot Topics

Civic and Citizen Journalism: Past, Present and Future

By Mary Beth Callie, Regis University

CIVIC & CITIZEN JOURNALISM | One of the most rewarding parts of my tenure as vice chair and now chair of the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group has been the opportunity is to learn from its founders, who are still active in the group. In 1994, when the University of Missouri’s Ed Lambeth founded the Civic Journalism Interest Group and became its first chair, two of its future chairs—Jan Schaffer and Cheryl Gibbs — were on the front lines of the civic journalism movement, which emerged in the late 1980s.

Meeting and working with people such as Ed, Jan and Cheryl has been not only personally rewarding, but also a way of understanding how what started out being known as the public or civic journalism movement continues to strive for approaches to journalism that enhance our democratic way of life. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC

Transformations: Stories from the Digital Front Lines

There’s much debate about the future of journalism these days, much of which I find uninteresting. Too often ideas and analysis flow great distances from the front lines. This, of course, is my bias: I’m rarely interested in the thoughts and ideas of those who haven’t rolled up their sleeves and done the dirty work to transform the world from one of atoms to one of bits.

That transformation is more subtle than simply a transition from static paper to interactive digital “page.” The implications are profound as we begin to understand the nature of network communication, linked information systems, open architectures and social inter-connectivity. Even the most basic idea of budget meetings, where editors and reporters “decide” what the news will be, should be overhauled and re-imagined in this network world. [Read more...]