Rather than just relying on secondary research I decided to e-mail some people directly. I appreciate receiving responses from professionals in the field, particularly after producing research on such topics it is interesting to see how the experience may result in divergent or comparable interpretations. I e-mailed around eighty professional members within the industry, the e-mails were sent to newspaper editors, journalists and photo journalists, whose contact details I collected off of the internet. I have used this method of research before and I appreciate that the number of responses you receive back is extremely limited, hence the large amount of individuals I sent the e-mails out to. To encourage responses, I kept my e-mail short, informing the recipient that I am a University student conducting some research and asking just two questions. The first was examining ‘citizen journalism’, asking whether they think citizen journalism is becoming more dominant and what they think of it. The second question was broader, questioning the media and what subjects and issues they think newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times and The Independent are prompted to investigate and publish.
As expected, most people merely did not respond, however I did acquire a handful of replies. I received some responses in which the respondents told me they felt they could not help because they believed they did not have the adequate knowledge to respond, and advised that newspaper editors are the individuals I should be contacting. One e-mail was particularly unexpected, Andrew Brown, a journalist who works for the Guardian decided not to ignore my e-mail and simply not reply, instead he sent me the following;
Dear Kay
I applaud the fact that you've learned enough journalism to try to get other people to find things out for you. Perhaps the next step would be to find things out for yourself. there's nothing that I could tell you that you couldn't try to work out by studying the media yourself. Try it.
Andrew
It seems Mr.Brown did not appreciate my endeavour to collect some primary research and determined a cynical response was in order. I on the other hand found his e-mail unnecessary, but I’ll put my bitterness aside.
Below I have posted the response I received, number ‘1’ are the responses I obtained regarding civilian journalism and ‘2’ are acknowledging media content.
Stephen Bates, The Guardian
1. Citizen journalism is a growing part of the media's resources but they are very far from becoming dominant. I hope there is still room for the sort of skills and experience that trained journalists can bring to bear on stories and reporting. There are limits to what citizen journalists can do without training. Their contribution to new media forms may be a different matter - I don't know - but reporting has to be and remain a disciplined and sustained, reliable fact-finding exercise if it is to be trusted. A lot of citizen journalism that I have seen is none of these things: it can be highly partisan, unreliable, bigoted, tendentious and biased.
2. The media (it goes for all professional news outlets) are always interested in STORIES: events and issues which inform, interest, entertain and instruct their customers. That goes for the Sun as much as The Guardian (and you might find that on any given day a high proportion of stories carried by all newspapers are much the same, only approached differently). I think you can guess the Guardian's interests and priorities and those of its regular readers by looking at it.
Martin Chulov, The Guardian
1. I wouldn't say dominant, but citizen journalists are becoming increasingly influential. Old media is embracing the communites that are built around social media sites and amongst all the noise out there are some valuable pieces of information and insights. There will still be a vital need for journalism professionals to filter, aggregate and conduct journalism in traditional ways though.
2. We're more interested in issues than subjects, and each paper is slightly different in what it pursues and how hard it pursues it. In the Guardian's case, among other things, we're interested in foreign affairs, particularly in the Middle East, in holding governments and institutions accountable for what they do and spend, climate change and empowering those whom the system routinely denies a voice.
Graham Snowdon, The Guardian
1. I've never thought CJ is a particularly helpful label - what exactly does it refer to? If you're talking about hyperlocal news websites, personally I'd say these are mostly more about community activism than journalism, ie local people finding ways of organising and making themselves heard in order to improve the places where they live. I'm not sure there is a lot of "reportage" style journalism going on at that level - there's certainly very little money to be made out of it. As for bloggers, people do that for all kinds of reasons - some for career kudos, some for news/activist purposes, and some expressly to make cash.
So I wouldn't say CJs are increasingly dominant at all. Although certainly a welcome and important part of the media landscape.
Tracy Mcveigh, Observer
1. I don't know what a citizen journalist is ? You mean bloggers? I know there is a movement in the US but not, as far as I'm aware here.
2. obviously we cover all subjects which is why correspondents are assigned to different areas, i.e arts corr, political corrs, community, foreign affairs, sports etc etc. No one subject dominates, except perhaps politics but then that too encompasses all sorts of subjects from economics to social affairs. News is whatever is newsworthy. Newspapers cover every aspect of life, or certainly try to.
Charles Arthur, The Guardian
1. Nope. They aren't dominant and it's not increasing particularly. It's easier to find out what people think and to get information from them but that isn't citizen journalism - which would need the intention of finding stuff out. Hardly anyone does that.
2. The things that have a story arc so they make a story; things their readers are interested in. News is: stuff you care about, stuff you want to pass on. News organisations try to do that.
Jon Dennis, Guardian
1. Obviously a lot of news is now reported first by people outside traditional media organisations. The death of Gaddafi being one example. Anyone with a smartphone or access to the internet can be a "journalist". So the challenge for traditional media organisations is to find ways of tapping into the knowledge and expertise of those people. In the case of Gaddafi's death, piecing together what happened with witness accounts and amateur footage.
2. The media are interested in the same as anyone who is curious about the world. What's new about this? Does it affect our readers? Is this information of value? If we write / take pictures / film videos about this, will people be interested?
Paul Owen, Guardian
1. Citizen journalists are not becoming dominant by any means - but they have had interesting input in certain key stories. I would look at the Mayhill Fowler "guns and religion" Obama story and the video footage of Ian Tomlinson being knocked to the floor by police.
Tim Adams, Guardian
1. Citizen journalists are more numerous, but I don't believe they will supersede professional journalists. Great reporting is all about time and trust, paid journalists have an advantage on both counts.
2. All newspapers are interested in stories that matter to people, the subjects that readers care about vary from day to day but intuiting that interest is what makes journalism come alive.
Although only a handful of responses and hardly a vast enough collection to make any conclusions, it seems, (from the journalists who responded at least), professional journalists do not seem concerned by the growth in civilian journalism. I grasp and agree with the general point made; civilians are less likely to research in great depth. They are also restricted on their level to actually attain adequate research as professional journalists are given far more opportunities and access. I sometimes consider people with opinions, who are interested in the events of the world and what is materializing like to share these opinions and in many cases there is an inner need to express and ‘enforce’ them. When I say enforce I do not mean it literally. Rather what I mean is people evidently always agree with their own opinion and often when arguing a point with another person whose opinion differs, you are not only sharing and challenging but subconsciously or not, in many cases you are also hoping for a change in your opponent, a desire for them to cross over to your side. Newspapers are often biased themselves, distinctly political papers and as I mentioned in a previous post they are openly biased on editorial pages. However I find there is a greater liability of prepossessed writing when it comes to civilian journalism.
Subject matter the media is interested in is almost impossible to answer, because essentially it’s everything. Personally however, (disregarding tabloid papers) I get the feeling it is political pieces. I cannot back this statement with any concrete evidence, nonetheless I will share my assessment regardless of it’s worth. I get the impression it’s political pieces because it’s politics that basically runs the world and there is also a general dislike for the political world and perhaps a bitter/sweet acknowledgment towards political news, particularly failures on their behalf or exposure of corruption and defamation. Moreover an amalgamation of anger towards their failure but also a sense of satisfaction towards the manifestation and their embarrassment.
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