Customer Reviews

We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

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Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links.

Joe Trippi's book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything joins Howard Rheingold's book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution and Bill Moyer's collaborative book, Doing Democracy as the companions for this book--taken together, the four books provide everything any group needs to "take back the power."

Whereas Trippi provides a personal story that illuminates the new power that comes from combining citizen activism with Internet-enabled networking, this book focuses more on the role the Internet and blogs play in the perception and dissemination of accurate unbiased information. It is not only an elegant presentation, easy to read, with good notes and a fine seven-page listing of cool web sites, but it also provides a useful survey of past writings on this topic--with due credit to Alvin Toffler's first perception of the trend toward mass customization and the elimination of intermediaries, together with original thoughts from the author.

This book could become a standard undergraduate reference on non-standard news sources and the blurring of the lines between producers and consumers of information (or in the government world, of intelligence).

Resistance to change by established media; the incredible emotional and intellectual growth that comes from having a "media" of, by, and for the people that is ***open*** to new facts and context and constantly being ***refreshed***, and the undeniable ability of the people in the aggregate to triumph in their assembled expertise, over niche experts spouting biases funded by specific institutions, all come across early in the book.

The book is provocative, exploring what it means when more and more information is available to the citizen, to include information embedded in foods or objects that communicates, in effect, "if you eat me I will kill you," the author's most memorable turn of phase that really makes the point.

While respecting privacy, the author notes that this may, as David Brin has suggested, be a relic of a pre-technological time. Indeed, I was reminded of the scene in Sho-Gun, where a person had to pause to defecate along the side of the trail, and everyone else simply stood around and did not pay attention--a very old form of privacy that we may be going back to.

Feedster gets some good advertising, and it bears mention that Trippi is still at the Google/email stage, while Gillmor is at the Feedster/RSS/Wiki stage.

Between Trippi and Gillmor, the term "open source politics" can now be said to be established. The line between open source software, open source intelligence or information, and open spectrum can be expected to blur further as public demands for openness and transparency are backed up with the financial power that only an aroused and engaged public can bring to bear.

Gilmor is riveting and 100% on target when he explores the meaning of all this for Homeland Security. He points out that not only is localized observation going to be the critical factor in preventing another 9-11, but that the existing budget and program for homeland security does not provide one iota of attention to the challenge of soliciting information from citizens, and ensuring that the "dots" from citizens get processed and made sense of.

The book slows in the middle with some case studies I could have done without, and then picks up for a strong conclusion by reviewing the basic laws (Moore, Metcalfe, Reed) in order to make the point, as John Gage noted in 2000, that once you have playstations wired for Internet access, and DoKoMo mobile phones that pre-teens can afford, the people ***own*** the world of information.

Spies and others concerned about deception and mischief on the Internet will appreciate the chapter on trolls, spin, and the boundaries of trust. Bottom line: there are public solutions to private misbehavior.

The chapter on lawyers and the grotesque manner in which copyright law is being extended and perverted, allowing a few to steal from our common heritage while hindering innovation (the author's words), should outrage. Lawrence Lessin and Cass Sunstein are still the top minds on this topic, but Gillmore does a fine job of articulating some of the key points.

The book ends on a great note: for the first time in history, a global, continuous feedback loop among a considerable number of the people in possible. This may not overthrow everything, as Trippi suggests, but it most assuredly does ***change*** everything.

I have taken one star away because of really rotten binding--the book, elegant in both substance and presentation, started falling apart in my hands within an hour of my cracking it open.

New books, with reviews, since this was published:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

Dan is one of the few professional journalists that really understands the impact of blogs and other new technologies on journalism. It's amazing how many professional journalists I know pooh pooh blogs and keep on chugging like nothing is changing. We, the Media is a excellent book that should be enlightening and humbling for professional journalists. It is also a great guide for us little "j" journalists about what the possibilities are as well as what the difficulties will be. Anyway, it's an amazingly important book for anyone interested in journalism and democracy. It goes well with Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture and Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs.

People's Journalism, Participatory Journalism, Citizen Journalism, Collage Documentary. Whatever you call it, we've put the tools for self publishing in the hands of millions. What happens when the amateurs outnumber the professionals ten-to-one? one-hundred-to-one? Big change, just starting in 2004.

Dan tackles how it works, why it's happening, and what this means. He sourced it with online research. And by thorough investigation, interviewing people on all sides of the phenomenon, by traveling in Asia, North America, and Europe to meet them.

If you've enjoyed his Mercury News column or his popular weblog, you'll enjoy his writing here. More importantly, if you are a J-school student or professor, a working news professional, an investor or manager in news media, this is a must read. The insights and conclusions will be useful as personal publishing, blogging included, continues to spread around the world.

As I was about to write this review, Reuters published the news that: "Iranian authorities have arrested at least six Internet journalists and webloggers in recent days, colleagues and relatives said on Wednesday, in a further blow to limited press freedoms in the Islamic state. News-based Internet sites and online journals known as Weblogs have flourished in Iran where the disproportionately youthful population often turns to the Internet for information and entertainment."

How significant is this? It indicates that the power of internet publishing, today's equivalent of samizdat (which in most slavic languages means self-published), is being recognized not only by those who consume and produce blog-based news, but also by those who fear the power of media when in the hands of the people.

I grew up in a communist country where every typewriter (machine) had to be registered with the police department. A friend of mine from a different town had asked me to buy him a typewriter because in his hometown his name was on a list banning him from owning a typewriter.

Today, everyone can start a Blogger account or install a Movable Type on a web server and start publishing. With this power, of course, comes enormous responsibility.

This book, "We The Media", is a fascinating look on the way the internet self-publishing and blogging phenomenon has changed the way we produce, consume, and share news.

The author is more than respectable--Dan Gillmor, the business and technology columnist from SilliconValley.com. The publisher, O'Reilly, is more than knowledgable on the subject of the convergence of new technologies, business and society. The result is enjoyable, educating, thought-provoking. In my humble, unprofessional opinion, this book fully deserves 5 out of 5 stars!

In his new book, Dan Gillmor skillfully chronicles a revolution-in-the-making -- the rise of citizens media, a grassroots-powered phenomenon in which users are becoming both competitors and collaborators with established news organizations.

"We the Media" is certainly the most important journalism book of the year, for it aptly details a gathering storm that is about to sweep away everything we thought we knew about the news.

Gillmor lays out his basic premise with his familiar mantra: My readers know more than I do-and that's an opportunity. He writes: "[R]eaders (or viewers or listeners) collectively know more than media professionals do. This is true by definition: they are many, and we are often just one. We need to recognize and, in the best sense of the word, use their knowledge. If we don't, our former audience will bolt when they realize they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage; they can come into the kitchen themselves."

In a real sense, we're all journalists now. Gillmor passes along approvingly the citizens media credo of Oh Yeon Ho, the reformist founder of South Korea's largest online paper, OhmyNews: "Every citizen's a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others."

The author recounts the time a Slashdot reader uncovered the misrepresentation in Microsoft's "Mac to PC" advertising campaign (the photo of the supposed Mac user who switched over to Windows actually came from a Getty Images archive). He capably relates a number of such episodes, such as the scoop scored last spring by the operator of the Memory Hole, who used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the military's photos of the flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers-something no news organization thought to do.

Blogs have been slow to take off in the mainstream media in part, Gillmor writes, because of "mistrust among traditional editors of a genre that threatens to undermine what they consider core values-namely editorial control" and "objectivity and fairness."

But he also tempers his embrace of this new world by tamping down any suggestion that blogs will put old media out of business or editors out of a job. "Bloggers who disdain editors entirely, or who say they're largely irrelevant to the process, are mistaken." At the same time, "my readers make me a better journalist because they find my mistakes, tell me what I'm missing, and help me understand nuances."

Despite the news industry's slow, plodding response to all this, Gillmor has come to reform big media, not to bury it. He writes with the passion of someone who desperately wants journalism to find its way in the digital age-and laments what will happen if it does not. "I'm absolutely certain that the journalism industry's modern structure has fostered a dangerous conservatism-from a business sense more than a political sense, though both are apparent-that threatens our future."

Gillmor saves his best admonition for last: "You can make your own news. We all can. Let's get started."

Hey, I come into contact with many journalists who cover craigslist and with thousands of people via customer service.

Through that, I see a lot happening in media, and Dan's book is the first and best to cover this.

I'm recommending this to journalists in every medium, literally, and they're already thanking me for it.

In my book reviewing, I occasionally come across a book that tilts my world view. We, The Media by Dan Gillmor (O'Reilly) is probably the best and most important book I've read in the last couple of years. It's a must read for serious bloggers and journalists, both "professional" and "citizen".

Chapter breakout: From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond; The Read-Write Web; The Gates Come Down; Newsmakers Turn the Tables; The Consent of the Governed; Professional Journalists Join the Conversation; The Former Audience Joins the Party; Next Steps; Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust; Here Come the Judges (and Lawyers); The Empire Strikes Back; Making Our Own News

So why is this book important? Because the balance of media power has shifted, and it's no longer in the hands of a few publishers who can make or break public perception. Via the power of the internet and the new tools such as blogs and wikis, anyone with a point of view and an interest becomes a reporter and has a voice. Those who are consumers of news no longer are restricted to controlled media outlets. With the use of RSS, you can "roll your own news" and assemble a collection of media feeds and outlets to get a more balanced view of events. During the Iraq war, people followed the blog of Where's Raed? to get a view of real life in the country as opposed to what we were permitted to see on mainstream news. Gilmore does an incredible job of revealing the power shift, as well as looking ahead to what this many-to-many approach to media might be in the future. In addition, he explains many of the legal issues surrounding electronic media that are being hashed out on a daily basis.

This whole subject recently became very real to me and a group of bloggers in my circle of interest. An IT analyst firm known as The Radicati Group engaged in some behavior that was viewed by many in the blogging community as unethical. For the whole story, see http://vowe.net/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?RadicatiGroup. But rather than have the story restricted to a small handful of individuals, the independent blogging community picked up the story and exposed the "anonymous" behavior. In short order, the mainstream IT media ran the story and discredited much of the firm's defense. The power had shifted from corporation to individual, and the individuals made the news. Even two or three years ago this couldn't have happened. Now with the new electronic media, the ethical behavior of individuals, companies, and goverments can be examined and exposed when necessary.

If you're a serious blogger or a journalist, this should be the next book you read. Your viewpoint of what you do "for fun" will be forever changed, and you'll have a much richer appreciation for exactly what it is you represent.

You would expect Dan Gillmor to put together a good story about the rise of participatory journalism as he does in "We the Media." What you might not expect is the deep quality of special insights when reading from the back to the front of the book.

I learn a lot about a person or their perspective by probing their online favourites. In Dan Gillmor's case, that comes in the form of a seven-page "Web Site Directory." Many of these citations come with RSS feeds--technology explained well in the book.

Gillmor's two-page glossary could be larger but its presence flavours the book. I personally filled the blank facing page with a glossary of my own, populated by new words that I found in "We the Media."

The 19 pages of "Notes" suggest follow-up chapters yet to be written. Some of these notes helped me set essay questions for the "Online Journalism" class I teach. "We the Media" serves as an essential textbook on the course. (Aside: the longest entry in the "Notes" is reserved for problems with running Microsoft Word on the Mac. There's a subtext in that fact.)

As a left-hander, I often open books by their back cover. Gillmor's index section met me there. It feels like a professional indexer sorted out this section with a careful touch to ensure no single voice dominated the index. Instead, Gillmor's main points ring true with the index emphasizing the themes of audience, government, grassroots journalism, news, newsmakers, RSS, and trustworthiness.

Above all else, you can trust this book and its author. I wouldn't have bought the hard cover edition if I wasn't sure its message needed to be saved for the next generation of new media practitioners we're training in southeast Ireland. That would be everybody who completes our freshman writing course.

When I read Dan's book, albeit proud of my bit roll, I was struck by his recognition and understanding of how change is impacting media and the news. While telling a friend in the traditional media business about it, her response was "bloggers are not journalists"...anticipating incorrectly what I was about to tell her about what I thought were some of Dan's important insights and observations.

I wonder if traditional journalists will read Dan's book, and understand what is not only happening, but what is coming vis a vis media and news.

Dan completely understands that with the technology available today, and the ability of smart people to write thoughfully and to publish on the web, no longer are we dependent on average or below average media.

If we are to have a meaningful society and democracy going forward then this is a book for thinking people.

Many people blame the Internet for accelerating the long-term decline of newspaper circulation, and think that the Internet is crippling the future of American journalism.

Don Gillmor believes that the Internet has the potential to dramatically improve American journalism and widen its appeal.

Gillmor is no naive innocent. He demonstrates that he has an extraordinarily detailed command of the interrelationships and applications of the many internet and software technologies and journalism. I met Gillmor in April, 2004, at the BloggerconII conference organized by Dave Winer and held at Harvard Law School. He held the attention of his audience of bloggers through his mixture of detailed knowledge and passionate advocacy for the worth of blogging and the value of it becoming an income-generating activity.

No journalist should fail to read this book. Nor should any citizen consumer of journalism who participates online. Only a small part manifesto, this book is a detailed roadmap of the future of journalism for those informed enough and bold enough to take it. Those in business and government who are the subjects of journalism would also do well to read it.

The future of journalism, Gillmor says, will be much more participatory in the future than it has been in the past. The many to many communications style of the Internet will become the style of successful journalism. Journalism will less about lecturing and more about leading a discussion. The "eat your spinach" school of civic advocacy will be replaced by a greater connection between readers and journalists in which readers will influence both the definition of news and the content of individual news stories.

The proliferation of tens of millions of blogs means that the separation of news producers and news consumers is far less than it used to be. Everyone can produce news in the blogosphere. One duty of journalists is to sift the through the blogosphere and find out what is relevant. Another duty of journalists is to actively engage the public in the news gathering process. The definition of what professionalism in journalism is will be rapidly changing.

What is now at the edges, Gillmour says, will and should be moved to the center. Public concerns that once were marginal now will become mainstream.

As a Pennsylvania state legislator, I believe that this will have significant public policy effects--especially the areas of taxation and public welfare expenditures. For the first time, those with average and below average incomes are able to communicate their concerns to a mass audience. The more the digital divide in Internet access erodes, as the divide in telephone and television access has eroded, the greater the erosion will be of the upper middle class dominance of the political process. The stakes for putting the brakes on the trends Gillmor describes will get increasingly large in the years ahead.

This is not just a book for journalists and the subjects of journalism, or even just a book for currently active internet participants. The detailed accounts of the consumer applications of various technologies of what he calls the "the read-write web" or "technology that makes we the media possible" are alone worth the effort to get through this book.

Others may understand individual technologies better than Gillmor, but it is unlikely that anyone has a better understanding of how they all--HTML,mail lists and forums,weblogs, wikis, SMS, mobile connected cameras, internet "broadcasting," peer to peer, RSS,Technorati, API, and many others--come to together to create a radically different architecture of information, news, personal reach, and circle of potential friends and allies for many millions of Americans.

This is not a book to be read and put aside. Gillmor clearly struggled to get his text into 241 pages, plus 36 pages of acknowledgements, websites, and detailed notes. While there is occasional redundancy, on the whole a longer book would have been clearer in some respects.

This is a book to be carefully studied and used as a springboard to continued learning about new applications, new technologies, and new interrelationships as they emerge.

The idea of the public as part of the media is not totally new.
Going back at least to the 1940's, public opinion research focused on the stages of influence: the mass media first influenced the opinion leaders in a community, who then influenced others by word of mouth.

What is new is the dramatically improved publishing capacity for the individual citizen, regardless of whether he or she had the community stature and web of influence to have been a community leader--formal or informal--in the past.

The media had been steadily eroding the influence of opinion leaders, by influencing more and more people directly, but now the opinion leaders are back in record-high numbers and with greatly expanded spheres of influence.

"I hope I've helped you understand how this media shift--this explosion of conversations--is taking place and where it is headed," Gllmour says on the last page of his book. "Most of all, I hope I've persuaded you to take up the challenge yourself.

"Your voice matters. Now, if you have something to say, you can be heard.

"You can make your own news. We all can.

"Let's get started."