A lot of the discussions about web 2.0 and the media tend to conflate citizen journalism with all sorts of other things that happen in the online media spaces. Bloggers, for instance, can be citizen journalists, but by no means all bloggers are, and perhaps a lot of bloggers occasionally are but are more often than not not… One of the traditional functions of public journalism, now rarely fulfilled in Australia, is to bring together a lot of relevant information that non-experts wouldn’t be able to find readily, contextualise that information, and relate it to issues and developments which materially affect citizens. Sometimes, still, you’ll find this done well on national issues, but at the local and even state level it seems to be almost a dying (if not dead) art. That’s why the sort of work blogger Derek Barry is doing here in Brisbane is so valuable.
LPers might remember my post a while back about the redevelopment of the old flour mill next to Albion station. At Woolly Days, Derek has done a top notch job of doing exactly what I’m characterising here as public journalism with respect to that very development, which is on his patch. I think we need to see a lot more of this. It’s a space that the MSM have left almost entirely empty, and because these sort of things are not just hugely important to citizens’ amenity but also to fostering real participation and civic capacities. Derek’s post also situates what’s happening in one inner city suburb of Brisbane within its global context - which again is something in my view that big media almost never does.
Enjoy while it lasts by *phenomenologist on deviantART
Derek’s post is well worth a read (although I’m partly interested cos it’s my neighbourhood too, and I’ve caught countless trains from Albion station in the shadow in the refinery - especially when I was a teenager).
The inability of the MSM (in major cities at least) to focus down on the specifics of the local is very infortunate. I think its part of (although by no means the only) reason why we have so little grasp of our the history of our own areas - which makes it much easier for governments and developers to keep tearing it down and bitumening and building all over it with little regard for maintaining continuity with the community. If a development can be sold as being part of a some broad mega-narrative (like TODs or traffic congestion), then the local details (and whether the sales pitch actually meets the eventual reality) get ignored.
Thanks, Mark - it was your original post that inspired me to look into this in more detail.
As for the question why doesnt the MSM tackle this sort of thing. For starters, most media outlets have cut back on their journalistic resources to the point where they simply cannot do local issues any justice.
They can only devote time and attention to the most obvious places where the news and its participants can be easily corralled (eg parliaments, news conferences, protests, sporting venues).
The idea of journalists wearing out shoe leather to chase down a long-running story is becoming increasing anachronistic. Most journos are assigned several stories a day. Tied to the desks, they can at best tie the major strands together but not really look too hard at any of the knottier problems.
There is also the perceived issue of audience attention span which prevents much detailed analysis from ever seeing the light of day. My story comes in at around 1,700 words. There’s unlikely to be any editor in the country that would consider running such a story for so local an issue.
I don’t see any immediate solutions to those problems other than for citizen journalists to continue taking up the cudgels and addressing the gaps as they appear.
We saw this sort of thing happen on the Gold Coast until they had an inquiry into the Council. Certain Councillors were found wanting in them gaining secret donations from Developers !