Page 9 - PR Communication Age APRIL 2016
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create new ways to tell stories and from their smartphones, generating formerly considered themselves sepa-
explain what is happening around the real-time crowd-sourced accounts rate entities with few common goals -
world. shared via social networks. Public infor- - the newsgathering and IT depart-
mation officers may begin tweeting ments. The result: new methods of digi-
A review of latest research in this area about the event, broadcasting facts to tal-era storytelling driven by this cross-
points to the following five emerging the public that previously might have disciplinary co-creation. Coders and
trends that will influence the news only gone to the media. Subject mat- programmers sitting next to columnists
business for years to come. ter experts can immediately weigh in and critics and working with shared
via their blogs and networks. Report- purpose is new in the history of news.
1. Growth of Citizen Jour- ers, meanwhile, can track these con-
nalism versations and organize the different "Snow Fall," a multimedia narrative
accounts into a cogent news narrative. created by The New York Times about
A wide range of technologies from cell a deadly avalanche in Washington
phone cameras to social media feeds Citizen journalism also has its dark State, won a Peabody and Pulitzer this
has empowered public citizens to play side, as crowd-sourced information on year. The six-part story was accompa-
a more active role in gathering, ana- social networks can fuel false rumors, nied by interactive graphics, video and
lyzing and disseminating the news. identify incorrect suspects or treat in- character bios, making the HTML5
Gone are the days when readers' input nuendo as fact. Still, many believe programming a key part of the story
to the news process was limited to the we're still early in the era of citizen development. Its success has become
letters section. Instead, news organi- journalism and tools will be developed a template for future multimedia jour-
zations are actively courting insights to harness the power of citizen journal- nalism projects at the Times.
and information from their audiences; ism and steer it toward truth and ac-
The Guardian, for instance, has an app curacy. Another example is Keepr, an app cre-
for people to submit photos and videos ated by Niemen fellow Hong Qu, a one-
or to act as primary sources for news 2. Emergence of hacker time developer at YouTube. The open-
developments. Journalists source Keepr is designed to help jour-
nalists separate good sources from bad
This doesn't mean that news organiza- Newsrooms will be seeing new levels while following breaking news on Twit-
tions are being usurped by user-gener- of collaboration between groups that ter. It uses natural language process-
ated content. Instead, it marks a shift
in the way breaking news information
is being sourced, as journalists are as
likely to scour Twitter as they are to
pound the pavement in search of inter-
views. And it changes how readers lo-
cate information, giving them access to
the same primary sources used by re-
porters while also letting them engage
with curated copy coming from the
mainstream outlets.
Consider who is involved in locating and
reporting breaking news today. Front-
line coverage may come from people
on the street sharing photos and video
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the
guilty innocent, and that’s power.”
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