the(new)mediaslut

The biggest story from Democrat nomination to hit the front pages of the papers came from a 61 year-old “citizen journalist” by the name of Mayhill Fowler.

Matthew Ingram, technology writer for The Globe, described her “as lightning rod for critics of the practice, after not one but two somewhat embarrassing scoops from the U.S. campaign trail, the first of which involved Barack Obama and the second of which — just last week — involved former president Bill Clinton”.

Wrote the LA Times,

The latest incident cemented Fowler’s place as the unlikely face of the new-media revolution that is remaking presidential campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news. Or an unpublished novelist “with absolutely no journalism training” can alter the national debate.

The Columbia Journalism Review asked if Mayhill had “any reservations about publishing the piece” and her reply highlights a point why citizen journalists face the same issues as a journalist would.

Mayhill replied,

Oh, yes. I had already told my East Coast editor Amanda Michel that there was more on the tape besides what I wrote immediately after, online. I told her there might be one more piece about what Obama had to say about Pennsylvania, and that it was pretty damning. We had a long conversation and she was talking about how if you’re really going to be a journalist, you have to be willing to report on what you see, what you hear, regardless of your political opinions. Already ‘Off the Bus’ had too many bloggers who are pro-Obama and therefore present everything from an Obama slant. And I thought about that for a while and at some point I realized on Monday that she was right. And on Tuesday, the piece was just in my head suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about it but the entire piece was suddenly there and at that moment I knew I was going to do it, and I had a sense of peace about it.

The Malaysian government was reported to have ordered a blackout of any news and photos in the country’s main stream media of the BERSIH rally held in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, on Saturday, Nov 10 2007.

The rally was well publicised and with a blackout in old media, where did the curious or concerned go to get information about the protest?

They went to the blogs of Malaysians and protest participants who took photos and wrote their account of the demostration online.

They went on Technorati and searched the keyword “Bersih” and probably visited one of the 493 blogs post tagged with the keyword “Bersih”.

Jeff Ooi reported a spike of visitors to his blog, Jeffooi.com, over the weekend. From an average of 5,000 - 6,000 visitors on sleepy weekends, Jeff reported 24,600 pageviews with 21,000 unique visitors to his blog on that Saturday itself.

There was a time when the medium was only the radio, television and papers. The cost of producing anything for them was expensive and out of the reach for the common man and woman. The cost of distribution was also exorbitant.

Today, the medium is the Internet and the tool they call a blog.

Another can set up a blog and go “live” on the internet within minutes, for free.

The cost of distribution has also gone done with blog search engines such as Technorati or Google.

The cost of creating such content, also now affordable to the masses.

A mobile phone is even touted as the ultimate journalist tool and could be bought at a relative low price depending on the plans provided by the service provider. It takes photos, records audio and video, and can be uploaded to the blog in minutes.

How effective is a government ordered old media blackout today?

Ahirudin Attan, the person behind rockybru.blogspot.com and a former journalist, called the blackout a severe blow to Malaysian journalism as “people had to rely on foreign tv stations, blogs and wire news to know what happened at the rally”.

I agree with Ahirudin. I would like to see new media work hand in hand with old media, but by ordering a classical old media blackout order only pushes old fashion readers like me to the Blogs.