Wisdom from a wise journalist

Wow.  I had the pleasure of hearing Dan Gillmor speak yesterday.  Outstanding.  He just oozed wisdom.  I mean, this guy has been a professional journalist for years, covering one of the most amazing times and places in history -- the growth of the tech industry in silicon valley.

He's an old-school reporter, meaning he still believes in things like accuracy, balance, independence and ethics -- the stuff I was taught in J-School but seems to be lacking in many journalists today.  In fact, one of his most interesting comments was his fear that traditional journalism quality is getting lost during this transformation we're going through.

But the thrust of his talk was the subject he's most known for -- citizen journalism.  He wrote the book on it.

Dan believes the more people are engaged with the news, the more active they'll be in their communities.  And getting engaged with the news is more than writing letters to the editor.  But he doesn't mean everyone has to blog or be a stringer either.

He had an excellent idea/example for how citizens could get involved -- as local investigative journalists in the rebuilding after Katrina.  No newsroom has the resources to monitor the rebuilding projects that will be funded by the billions of dollars coming from the Federal government.  Why not "deputize" local citizens to do things like make phone calls to local officials to trace where the money is being spent or to submit Freedom of Information Act requests whenever they get stonewalled.  Newspapers, he contends, could be the facilitators of all this activity and allow citizens to take part in the process.  It's an amazing idea.

I also liked his notion that newspapers can be "the conveners of the community conversation."  If you think about it, local papers still have a great deal of credibility -- I know ours does.  They have an opportunity to build on that credibility by allowing citizens to take over the editorial page or write "hyper local" sections of the paper or web site.  For example, why couldn't one of the moms in my neighborhood submit a story now and then about our effort to get the City to install a speed bump on our street or the state of the housing development and its impact on my home's value.  Very cool stuff.