London's citizen reporters prove their worth with their coverage of bombing: With the tsunami on Boxing Day we saw the power of the "citizen journalist" in providing instantaneous footage of events when no camera crews or photojournalists were present. But last week marked another step in the disintegration of media hierarchies. When the tsunami happened, people were holidaying, often with video cameras to hand, in a frame of mind in which they were thinking of recording events for posterity, even if they had no inkling of what a very different experience they would be bringing home. The explosions in London happened at a time when commuters and other travellers would not have expected an event, when they would have had to search in their bags or rummage in their pockets for phones.
Blogosphere zeros in on Castro: As Hurricane Dennis bears down on the U.S. this evening, it's done some of the worst damage, ever, in Castro's decaying island tyranny on Cuba.
But something's happening. Cubans, long deprived of technology like the Internet and cell phones, except in the most controlled circumstances, somehow are getting their hands on them anyway. And they are giving live reports from every corner of Cuba, to Cuban-Americans in Miami and elsewhere, who are now posting them on Val's Babalu blog.
(ler também Why Newspapers Are Betting on Audience Participation: Under this model [what is called participatory journalism, or civic or citizen journalism], readers contribute to the newspaper. And they are doing so in many forms, including blogs, photos, audio, video and podcasts.
Whether such efforts can revive revenue for newspaper publishers is an open question. But with gloomy financial forecasts and declines in circulation, some papers are starting to see participatory journalism as their hope for reconnecting with their audiences.)
