Virtual Chicago
February 2006
by Keidra Chaney

To its supporters, it's news created “by the people, for the people”—sowing the seeds of a brave new world of democratic media. To its detractors, it's the beginning of the end for traditional news reporting. The Independent Media Center has practiced a form of it for several years, as have a considerable number of bloggers and grassroots community activists in print and on the Web. It's called “Citizen Journalism,” or “participatory journalism”—commonly defined as news that is written and reported by non-professional journalists—and it's been generating its fair share of debate nationwide.

On November 30, I read an article where NPR media commentator Bob Garfield recently made the ominous proclamation to Ball State journalism students that the media will soon be extinct. According to Garfield, Internet technology and newer media models, including citizen journalism would lead to a “chaos scenario” for the old guard. (Incidentally, also the name of Garfield's latest book.) “The collapse of the old media model will unleash vast forces, and much of it will be coming at you but there's nothing especially orderly about the media's new world order,” was Garfield's doomsday message to the crowd of future media professionals. The same day, I learned from Craigslist about a new citizen journalism Website launching here in Chicago, with a familiar name: “Chicago Daily News.”

Founded by former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Geoff Doughtery, chicagodailynews.org was created as a response to what Dougherty saw as a gap in coverage of the local dailies: a focus on the news and stories occurring in Chicago’s neighborhoods. The Website is published as part a non-profit corporation called PublicMedia, Inc., with Dougherty, Arizona State University Professor Stephen Doig, and Chicago-based video production executive Scott Marvel serving on the three-person Board of Directors. An emphasis on strong community-focused journalism, not the bottom line, was the motivation to set up the project as a not-for-profit venture. “The eye is not on the ball when it comes to journalism in Chicago,” Doughtery said in a phone interview. “The state of reporting in Chicago is underwhelming in so many areas.”

Doughtery plans for the Website to focus “hyper-local neighborhood reporting,” with freelance and citizen journalists assigned to cover each of Chicago's zip codes. So far, approximately 10 of Chicago's 50 zip codes have been assigned. “We've seen their resumes, we know their credentials,” he says of the writers recruited to serve as neighborhood reporters. “We have people who are great writers who their communities and who will be great resources for us.”

Barb Iverson, a professor at Columbia College who studies and teaches about journalism and new technology, has been “impressed” with the project's focus on neighborhood reporting, but thinks that assigning reporters to “beats” defined by zip codes may present a challenge. With Chicago-area neighborhoods and demographics primarily defined by 77 “community areas” rather than solely by zip code, “there will be issues where the [news from a] zip code will not correspond with the neighborhood.”

In December, Dougherty faced another challenge in the form of the Chicago Sun-Times' legal office. After Chicago Tribune Internet columnist Steven Johnson published a short interview with Dougherty, chicagodailynews.org attracted its fair share of attention, not all of it positive. After the publication of Johnson's column, Dougherty received numerous inquires from potential contributors—as well as a cease-and-desist order from the Chicago Sun-Times over his publication's name. (The Chicago Daily News, in print until 1978, was published as a companion newspaper to the Sun-Times. According to Johnson, the Sun-Times does not currently hold trademark rights to the name.) In response, Doughtery renamed the site chitowndailynews.org.

In his column, Johnson called citizen journalism “a concept hasn't fully proved out in many places beyond the Korean OhmyNews and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia,” (failing to mention the open-source journalism practiced by Wikipedia's WikiNews, the grassroots activist-journalism of Independent Media Center and giving scant acknowledgement to local sites Gapers Block and Chicagoist.) Only hours later, Chicagoist countered with a bold (and rather supercilious) proclamation of its own: “The future is in the Chicagoists and Gawkers and Wikipedias of the web, not in dead trees,” which in turn sparked off a dialogue among Chicagoist readers about whether blogs like Chicago can be defined as “journalism” at all:

“Is the MSM (Mainstream media) perfect? Of course not, and they need to do more,” posts one anonymous reader. “But the prime role of journalism is to keep watch on the government…until blogs and youth papers do more of that, they can't be taken as seriously as the MSM. Writing about bars and food and dibs and celebrities and music is interesting and often important, but government reporting is where serious journalism is made.”

Adding to the fray is the December 30 Chicago Reader article from Michael Lenehan, squarely (and rather scathingly) placing blame on bloggers and citizen journalists for the erosion of journalism jobs and declining print readership, and satirically calling for “real” journalists to take the year off:

“With no news to aggregate, no facts to ruminate, the algorithms and the bedroom pundits will turn on each other like mirrors, producing a perfect regression of narcissistic self-reflection, repeating endlessly, adding nothing, ever shrinking, ad infinitum.”

The Chicagoist exchange and Chicago Reader article are just local examples of a broader debate on the role of new participatory media models will play in the future of new reporting. There are several models of citizen journalism: in some cases, the news submitted by citizen journalists is reviewed and edited by professionals before publication, while some projects employ a process called “open source” or “participatory” journalism where articles can be submitted, published and edited by anyone, free of gatekeepers. It's a process embraced by some media professionals and tech-savvy practitioners as the future of journalism and a reaction against limited coverage in mainstream media, but decried as a threat to both news accuracy and integrity and to professional journalist's own jobs. In November, alternative newspaper San Franciso Weekly published a feature on craigslist.org founder's Craig Newmark and reported his own intentions to provide financial citizen journalism projects across the country, with a healthy dose of skepticism about the legitimacy of citizen journalism as a concept, citing citizen journalist's “skill limitations,” and the lack of an institutional structure, as burgeoning movement's main roadblocks to gaining credibility.

Iverson sees the possibility for citizen journalists and professional journalists to work together and cites successful examples such as http://mymissourian.com/, where journalism students and amateur journalists collaborate to report on local news.” In smaller places like in Missouri, where they don't have [resources] for extensive coverage, this plays an important role for them.

While Iverson personally subscribes to the belief that “every human being has one big story in them, that no professional could write better,” and that participatory models such as citizen journalism may provide a way for these stories to be told, “I don't think professional journalists have to worry—these stories will only come every once in awhile, and people won't necessarily know how to tell them,” thus continuing the need for professional journalists with the resources and skills to devote time to substantive news coverage. Dougherty sees the role of Chicago Daily News to work with professionals as well as citizens to get the stories. “We're really committed to reaching out, to getting coverage in areas that are not being [adequately] covered.”