One of the things I do in the evenings and weekends is copy-editing. Lots of different stuff – textbooks and science and philosophy and religion and … I love helping other people make the sort of book they really want to write. (I am, however, famously nit-picking and pedantic. Don’t come to me if you want to use ‘impact’ as a verb.)
The book I’ve been working on recently is a beginner’s guide to journalism, one of the chapters of which is about the future of journalism now that we’re all content-providers (this, being said on a blog, is looking dangerously incestuous).
What intrigued me is that how ‘citizen journalism’ could be replaced by ‘citizen science’ and the sense would have been exactly the same. Citizen journalism is democratising, heralds the beginning of ‘bottom-up’ journalism but are standards under threat? Instead of carefully-crafted news, are we faced with a flood of pseudo-news? Rather than a tightly-argued discussion of a complex event, will readers be left to weave the narrative for themselves from a bunch of hyperlinks? What happens to quality and content when untrained ‘news bunnies’ are let loose? While blogging and micro-blogging open up critical debate, do they also increase the quantity of unverified fact at large in the ether?
The zeitgeist is changing. From advertising to zoology, the old metrics don’t work as well any more. So we have to create new ones but in doing so, we’ll set everything in flux and have to go through a period of some pain.
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And in many ways both those things are returning to their roots: back in the days of pamphleteering anyone (with enough money) could write for public consumption. And back in the Days of Darwin and Lowell, anyone (with enough money) could do science.
There was a trust issue then too (except that few were privileged enough to suffer from its consequences in the way that the public of today might): pseudo-science was rife. But also some of the greatest scientific ideas ever devised came from these people because of the freedom of thought they were permitted.
Institutionalising both journalism and science had mixed results. It raised the standards (in fact it created the standards) but it also squashed a lot of ingenuity and creativity and made things rather “samey”. Received politics took over journalism and received wisdom took over science.
So yes, there are risks returning to a more egalitarian content provision, but there is also much to gain, I think (speaking as an amateur scientist in that same 19th century mould).
Having to weave your own narrative from a bunch of hyperlinks, and maybe even having to sift fact from fiction, have their upside – they make us more acutely aware of what we read and think, and put the onus on us to become active participants instead of spongelike couch potatoes.
Bring on the pain!
Have you read the articles in Nature’s special on science journalism? http://www.nature.com/news/specials/sciencejournalism/index.html
There are some great articles. Be sure to check out Breaking the convention? and Too close for comfort
Thank you – yes, I read those articles very closely over the weekend. I’ve torn them out and they are in my special ‘interesting pieces of paper’ envelope!