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Minnesota Public Radio: What do citizens want from citizen media

Here are running notes on a conversation streamed live today (June 6, 2008) on the web from Minnesota Public Radio in Saint Paul, Minn. -- a group of 14 citizens and a half dozen media reformers talking about what citizens want from their citizen media -- moderated by MPR's Michael Caputo.

Listener Jan Fisher (spelling) talks about the punch cards/hanging chads from 2004 in Florida. It struck him as odd that a professor/commentator knew all about the chads problem -- "I think we overrely on our found experts . . . when you talk to the person who actually really did it, you find out what really went wrong."

Listener says it makes sense to have small staff of professional journalists at Off the Bus on Huffington Post and elsewhere, which vet stories contributed by hundreds of citizen contributors. The professionals "do a really good job of keeping their bias out, but keeping the tidbids of the reporting in."

Listener: "I'm having trouble understanding what the downside is to having the public send their tidbits in . . . as long as the media source is still in charge of making sure the information is correct . . . can somebody help me out with that?"

Listener: The problem is partisanship has been going up and up -- there is nobody neutral in America anymore -- everyone is partisan. Even if you try to go and listen to the news as a neutral person, someone from the opposite side will attack. Ombudsmen at The Washington Post and elsewhere, this is much more sophisticated than just an average citizen criticizing or making judgement.

Listener Joe Shaeler (sp?): The public can be like the second wave on a story. You could read a story, say on the economy, and request input. The professional reporters can qualify partisanship out. ... .

Michael Caputo: What about the public as correspondent, as the iReporter initiative at CNN. It's produced by the public.

Listener David Degraf -- The problem is there are too many people who now have pedestals. The media is not the only culpable. He watches news from Fox, CNN, NPR, Sean Hanity or Al Frankin or Rush Limbaugh. He likes news. "But as soon as it gets into the pop culture stuff, that's when I change to a new channel becuase I am more interest in the problems our country faces ... the media would focus more on that if the public were more discerning."

Listener: He's seen reporting from citizen journalists every bit as good as what the professionals provide. He edits for a website called OpEd.com. The have articles and submissions from all over the world. "I think a lot of the insights that everyday people provide are every bit as important as what the professional journalists provide."

Listener: Critic and collaborator as the citizen role is fine. But there are some sorts of news that the professional journalist can't find. She's interested in the public as correspondent. The Greenwash Brigade is a blog about sustainability issues. She has a master's degree in affordable housing and cares about that issue. It gives her a chance to say that a Fuji Bottle Water sponsorship of MPR -- that's crazy if MPR has an commitment to sustainability.

Listener: He grew up on radio. There are now endless ways for the public to contribute. "The problem is there is such an explosion [of sources] which avenues do you choose?"

Michael Caputo: The purpose of journalism is to give citizens the tools and information they need to be an active citizen. So what can you trust?

Listener Jan Fisher: We can talk about the public being critic. But if you read the blogs, they are not only criticizing the professional reporter, they are critcizing each other. With anonymity, you can say anything to anybody. "I think we are in really sad shape . . . we have lost our politeness . . . . "

Listener: "It used to be this was a controlled field . . . It's beyond any single person's control now . . . it's about building reputation and quality over time." Yes, everybody is partisan. There's an incredible difference in quality. Because of the skepticism by the public now, if an organization involves the public and is clear and transparent over time, eventually the public will think, "they don't get it right all the time, but I think they usually get it right." You don't pay attention to unreliable blogs.

Michael Caputo: Think about what you want that relationship to be like -- public vs. media

Listener: You have have to consider about how much of an expert you are vs. the material you are reporting or blogging about.

Listener: Al Hibs (spelling?) -- His concern is with the wider public that isn't sophisticated about understanding how to consume news. "What are they hearing?"

Listener: When people have the opportunity to correspond in media, "There is the draw to say something just because you have the ability to say something." He thinks as in Public Insight Journalism, you should be qualified for commenting to some extent by your expertise.

Michael Caputo: How far can we go with the citizen expert when it comes to presenting news?

Listener: Can't change people's minds about wanting to look at Brittany Spear's navel. He thinks in the future people will tailor the kind of news they want -- and they may enter their point of view as well for filtering the news they receive. "You might be able to filter out the stories you want that give you your point of view ... what can we do to encourage people to want discerning news. Becuase I think its out there but people choose not to use it."

Listener Mark: He read the statement of the problem. "The problem I actually see is the gatekeepers of the news. I see a lot of good reporting. And then I see the story drop off for the easy story like Anna Nicole Smith." How can you get informed information when the only people the gatekeepers are putting on are political pundits. We need gateskeepers. But if the public doesn't want to come to you becuase you are telling long political stories and they woudl rather tune into entertainment tonight, let them. But still provide the other stuff.

Michael Caputo: But who is the gatekeeper? "You are."

Listener Mark: Wants to here the news, not some pundit.

Listener: Worries about the press having its rights to report stripped from it.

Listener Greg: "I don't want the news organizations I listen to to relinquish their professional responsibility . . . I want to listen to an organization that doesn't necessarily impost its viewpoint but takes responsibility ... to cover a story in depth, to cover it long . . . I want that."

Greg has a new idea. He is in medicine. In medicine there are secondary sources -- because you can't keep up with the primary sources. The other tool medicine has -- is checks. He is thinking of FactCheck.org . . . he's pays attention to the Pulitzer prizes. He wants a way to get ranking news by quality.

Michael Caputo: Who is going to rank my information?

Greg: "There may be many rankers. And there may be a competition there where things rise to the surface."

Listener: Christian Annenpour (spelling?) did a three-part series on religious freedom fighters. He likes to watching hour-long investigative series. He'd like to see a public TV channel that rather from 7 p.m. to midnight has perhaps eight one-hour long investigative reports, where he could sit down and be really informed on something.

Listener: He hopes that the media will accept responsibility to be his most-reliable fact checker. "I want a media that I can turn to that can find out the facts -- nuts and bolts . . . is anybody actually providing the basis of hard-core information rather than opinion."

Michael Caputo: I will give you 100 facts, 12 inches in my newspaper, I can only put 20 of those facts in there, or only 10 facts in five minutes of air. Even with facts, decisions must be made.

Listener: He's been listening. What are we talking about to begin with -- the idea that people are fed up with the news they are listening to?

Michael Caputo: The public doesn't think they are getting relevant news. How do we invite the public in? What should the relationship be?

Listener Mike Germain: The individual needs to take the responsibility to be informed. We need more detailed stories. But the citizen should go ahead and look for other sources. He cites onlinenewspapers.com . . . . "I think we are going in a positive direction. I think that the fact the public is informed enough to be made about the type of news they are getting."

Listener: Interested in the question of who is the gatekeeper. How do we open the gates and keep the reliability of the news. The media needs to be open to many different types and levels of contributions from the public. You can ask for story suggestions in an explicit way. She heard a story where someone from HUD was saying something which she knew from her master's thesis was absolutely false. But nobody asked her opinion.

Listener: Linda Bolandcheller (sp?) Everybody is under the assumption that everybody has cable and Internet and that is not the case. She just got Internt and does not have cable. Her news source is the Star Tribune.

After a five minute break -- reformers arrive

After a five-minute break we now resume with some reformers.

• Bill Densmore of the Media Giraffe Project http://www.mediagiraffe.org/about

• Michelle Ferrier of http://www.MyTopiaCafe.com in Daytona Beach, Fla. She says MSM has a process which shuts out voices. She talks about media committing "random acts of blindness."

• Griff Wigley, of the blog Locally Grown in Northfield, Minn. He talks about the Representative Journalism initiative, to bring a journalist to the table in Northfield. Would the community pay for a journalist? Can put out story ideas, and ask journalists to provide the reporting on a contract basis? He hears the listeners really wanting solid journalism.

• Tom Atlee form the Co-Intelligence Institute in Eugene, Ore. To what extend can dialog and commentary be done well online. There is a sense of caring and wisdom expressed by the listeners. What about the relationship between the public and the media. What if you were here for several days and were not just expressing your thoughts but were mandated to come up with some statement for the country about the role of the media? He sense the position for such a dialog.

• Julia Opoti, works for TC Daily Planet and Chalet (caters to 100,000-strong African community in Minnesota) and a Kenyan-community blog site. Local news does not give you enough information.

• Steve Clift with e-Democracy.org. Hosts online neighborhood community forums. "People say talk is cheap. We say conversation is cost-effective." They generate conversation, but with no news. There role is "not just to make news, but to solve problems." He thinks the listeners tonight seem very nationally focused.

• Andrew Haeg, senior producer of Public Insight Journalism. They have been trying to figure out how to open those gates. When do we abdicate role of gatekeeper, when to we keep it. "I want to be challenged ... we want to understand how we can do even better. How do we connect with the knowledge, the intelligence you all have?" Often he finds people don't think they have knowledge or expertise. "It is our job to try to convince you [you do.] It is a tough job." Another challenge: How do we get out of our role as editors as set the news agenda in a different way.

Back to the listeners

Listener JonPual Barrabee -- Journalism is about challenging government. He would like to see a way in which citizens are given cameras to go around to press events, make tapes in entirely of news conferences and are put on the web. So public officials can be challenged on what they say based on the videotaped record. He wishes all public meetings were taped and archived on the web for later viewing. He thinks editor's meetings should be videotaped and put on the Internet.

Michael Caputo: Hyperlocal is all about the rotary club.

Listener: Jan Fisher -- He is a news columnist at Pine Islands. They cover the school board and the planning meetings. There might be three stories on three different aspects of mine meeting. There are also positive things in there. There are other things that go on. Local papers tend to emphasize positive things and minimize so and so got into an accident on the highway. Local papers tend to be more about what is going on.

Listener: Former Minnesota Gov. Jess Ventura said MPR is the only news source that gives every politician a fair shake. He participants in e-Democracy quite a bit. In Minneapolis, there are many places for access to goings on in neighborhoods and communites. "I think the media has to focus more on being the watchdog of the government, because if they don't do it nobody else does."

Listener: "As a journalist, I look to you to tell me about the things that are outside my normal perview."

Listener: He worries that if the media spends too much time focused on citizen input, it may be distracted from covering issues of government -- such as learning that the gusset plates are weak (the cause of the Minnesota bridge collapse).

Listener: Concerned that the public is not happy with the numbers. He believes their need to be public input, but worries about it being too much uninformed input. There are lots of people with journalism degrees getting into this one. He's not afraid that quality of journalism is threatened by proliferation.

Listener: Linda -- She has worked in law enforcement and works with block groups. One reason she doesn't watch the news is she sees the difference between what took place and what was reported. There is fluff thrown in to make the story exciting. Things aren't reported to the end so people aren't afraid of what they are hearing. They only report the excitement. She's a single parent and works all day. The news she catches is going to work or before bed. Her outlet is the newspaper or TV. She doesn't understand why the Strip won't put the TV guide back into the paper.

Listener: Michael -- He lives in Apple Valley. Public meetings are generally taped and put on public access. He can compare the archival reports to what the paper wrote and make your own judgement. "We are entering an age and have lived through an age where it is more important than every for citizen to keep the media's feed to the fire." There has been too much cozying up and footsying, and reporters "sucking up to their sources." The press should be the Fourth Estate rather than the fourth arm of the government.

Michel Caputo: That was the call for the public as critic.

Michelle Ferrier: The realities are difficult. The newspaper industry is consolidating. Fewer reporters doing more work in a larger field. It's not always a matter of being a lazy journalist but having the time to be informed and do the investigative report we are being asked to do. People got into the business to make a difference -- now they are being asked to do more raather than less. What shoudl the public do: "Helping us in scanning the environment so we know what the issues are . . . what are you feeling and experiencing in your individual lives . . . we're time crunched just like you are."

Listener: Mark -- He would like to hear about issues before they are decided, so the public still has the ability to influence the debate. Too often they are reported on after the decisions are decided. He appeals for "giving the news the old fashion way like it was when I grew up."

Listener: Mary Anne Boland -- "I have found maybe in the last 10 years, probably since news organizations started to consolidated ifferent media with TV owned by newspapers and radio stations, that you are getting biased information rather than the news that they are supposed to be reporting. One of the reasons that they put the press in the consitution was that it was supposed to supply us in the public with information we could digest and keep the government healthy."

Listener: Dick -- "I think one of the things there has been is this capture of the media by capitalism." If the media is going to have to plead with corporate owners to support public radio, or purchasing advertising -- with this consolidation of media outlets -- "I think there is an obvious suspicion with the public that the media is screwing with us because they are owened by." He dislikes that much in the web is anonymous.

Griff Wigley: In Northfield, there is a growth in the civic capacity of our citizenry. At Locally Grown, will want transparency from the reporter they hire -- they will say, "We want you to be transparent as you work on this story."

Michael Caputo: Notes that MPR's Bob Collins is a reporter who just blogs -- where he writes a little, the public writes a little, and it goes back and forth.

Listener Greg: Journalism has improved in the 200 years of the nation. Bias journalism was a problem at the start, as was lack of information for the public. Now he says there are numerous current examples of major stories broken by citizens, by non-journalists. He thinks the public is searching for information. He wishes that when he reads about a story he could be immediately connected to the source information.

Greg thinks a solution is for quality news organizations should be part of networks that promote and strengthen quality news.

Listener, Donna: She's trying to come up with ideas that stretch what MPR and other groups are doing. It's key to keep focus on people all across the state. Gusset plate inspectors knew there was a problem. There is a supposedly energy-efficient building in the state is actually an energy hog -- she is the only person who knows that riht now because of her background. She says identify small media sources and highly one of those a day on the radio. She thinks what Griff was saying about citizen tools -- she is not sure media outlets should be used to strengthen citizen engagement. But why not use the same citizen-building tools to build involvement in the media.

What about finding what the public wants?

Tom Atlee -- He tells the story of McLean's Magazine in Canada. They convened 12 people who represented the diversity of Canada back in 1991. They ended up creating a vision and succeeding through tremendous difficulty. McLean's gave 39 pages to that, and CBC covered it. Three pages of their agreement at the end. "It was a profoundly different and creative kind of journalism." We don't have in our public sphere the idea what would the public come up with if it were asked. "What we have is partisan information and a lot of factual information. We don't have this 'we the people, what would we come up with' kind of information."

Listener Teller -- It seems there is a presumption that local and national news are exclusive from one another. He'd like to see an increased focus on how national issues are affecting people in local communities. Local news is more accessible to you me and everyone else than national news.

Steve Clift -- Would love to see news organizations collaborate to create dialog on public issues -- such as graffiti -- that communties are dealing with nationally on the local level. He'd like to see MPR and Strib to collaborate rather than compete with their collaborators and say, "Minnesotans, go online and connect with your neighbors ... really make it so we can breakdown the barriers among people."

Listener: Elizabeth Tobias -- Suggstions media make public the veritical and lateral relationships among you. "Journalists need to establish relationships not only with me but with each other."

Michael Caputo: The old mindset is compete for the story.

Tobais: "YOu are not competing for the story, you are competing for me!"

Michelle Ferrier: She talked with another placeblogger about becoming sister cities, sharing content and sharing ways to solve problems.

Listener Jan Fisher -- It used to be that anybody who was reporting had a bias. Watch the American channels report the Olympics vs the CBC or BBC.

Michael Caputo: There is a school of thought that journalists should just say what their point of view is and lay it out there. Would the public accept that?

Listener: There is a preconceived idea that there is a bias involved.

Listener: "The role that I am looking for out of media is one of sorting out all the stuff . . . I need somebody to sort out what happned in that two-hour council meeting that I need to know."

Listener Greg: Everytime you can give us a way to go to the source, that's a benefit.

Listener Mike Germain: There is solid fact-based going on in the distributed reproter area -- like the Off the Bus model. Really factbased solid reporting. A couple of the pieces he worked on -- he did a series of 200 interviews across the country. It was sent into the professional journalists. He could see how aspects of his work were incorporated by the professional. There's a lot of fact-based work going on out there. If you use the distributive model you have the journalist all wrapped into one.

Bill Densmore -- How much would you be willing to pay for quality journalism.

Griff Wigley -- Would you rather pay for the journalist or for a specific story?