Me the media
I am currently reading We The Media by Dan Gillmor. I’m not overly taken with it so far but I don’t think that’s a reflection on the book. I am already familiar with most of the ideas, concepts and events that he writes about and I think most people who are interested in the subject would be so there’s very little new in it for me so far. It would be more useful to someone with less experience of on-line media.
The main idea of the book is explained in the title which is a modification of We the people… taken from the US constitution. The idea is that with the rise of the web and in particular personal publishing tools such as blogs and discussion forums, the ordinary people have more potential to be part of the media circus, making and breaking stories that were previously the preserve of newspapers, television stations, and big media corporations.
I decided to try and put this into practice. I was having problems with my connection to the internet and despite assurances from the ISP helpdesk that there was no problem at their end I was convinced that it was a problem with congestion in their server.
So after getting nowhere with the helpdesk I decided to post a description of my problem on the discussion forum on my town’s website and requested that other people with the same problem call the helpdesk. I felt that the only way they would listen was if they got a lot of complaints.
I got some responses from people who had similiar problems and it seemed to do the trick. The ISP contacted me and admitted that there was a possibility that the problem was at their end and that they would look into. It seems to be working OK now.
Anyway, I open my local paper today and what do I see but a big headline about the issue and a story sourced directly from my comments on the discussion forum.
Apparently they have sourced a number of stories from the discussion forum over the last few months.
We the Media in practice.
Mark Waters marked time at 3:29 pm on October 6th, 2004 .
It’s actually rather informative reading the sources behind many of Dan Gillmor’s stories and in noting that Gillmor acknowledges an Irish influence in micropublishing.