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Community activists and citizen journalists find widespread attention to their messages now relies on a Blogging Breakthrough By Lisa Davies J201 Reporter Josh Claybourn doesn't let most issues sneak by him; he challenges everything.
So when he heard that Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis, where he is a second-year student, might be making some questionable decisions about facility expansion, he didn't ignore it. Claybourn took on his own investigative reporting. He uncovered e-mails that weren't being released to the public, and he ran into a lot of people who weren't willing to comment. The law school expansion was being called off so as not to challenge IU Bloomington.
He believed that this was information the local community needed to hear, but it was not being covered by the media. Once again, he took matters into his own hands. Claybourn published his findings online, at the IndyLaw Net weblog. Comments started pouring in from people determined to receive fair treatment.
It was about this time that the mainstream media picked up on the story. The Bloomington Herald-Times and The Sagamore both published stories based on Claybourn's work.
Claybourn's dedication and the widespread readership of his blog forced this private information into public hands.
“I now know how to make something that matters a story in the mainstream press,” Claybourn says. Citizens such as Claybourn are now taking matters into their own hands when it comes to local news that is important to them. Blogs are helping these people take an active stance in advancing community issues.
In June 2002, the Pew Internet Project found that 3 percent of surveyed Internet users ran their own blog. That number had jumped to 7 percent, or 8 million American adults, by 2004. The survey found 32 million users who currently read blogs, but blog use is also becoming more interactive. Almost 12 percent of users frequently post comments on entries.
Technorati.com, the self-proclaimed authority on blogs, estimates that 12,000 new weblogs are created each day. The website also tracks and emphasizes links on blogs, which are imperative in quickly spreading information. The ability to link directly to posts as opposed to forcing a reader to search an entire website for information saves people time and frustration. Currently, Technorati knows of more thatn 848 million blog links. Advances in technology make creating and obtaining a blog easy. Users can go to a website such as livejournal.com or xanga.com and register with a name and password. Of course blogs can be changed to have a certain color scheme or font, but all a user has to do to express his opinions in the blogosphere is to type into a box.
Before, users had to know an html code in order to make text work. Now, users don't even have to know what html is. Technology also lets readers comment on a blogger's post, which allows numerous people from the community to be involved in an issue.
For instance, on Hoosier Review , an IU blog serving as an alternative to the campus newspaper, Joshua Herring wrote about a specific incident on the radio where he was particularly offended. The radio director stumbled upon the entry from a friend of a friend, and responded to Herring's concerns immediately. Comments increase the voice of the community, and they are simple to use.
Not only are blogs user-friendly, but they are convenient. The Internet provides a limitless audience with which to reach others and advance local issues. The amount of information the reader gains is endless as well, thanks to links.
Claybourn writes for In The Agora , a collaborative blog that discusses current events, faith and science among other things. In Greece, the agora was a marketplace for the sharing of ideas. Here, Claybourn shares his commentary on other articles or news stories, which he links to in his posts, in the hopes of stirring others to action.
“It's not about me,” Claybourn says. “It's about the issues I'm trying to advance. There is satisfaction in making a difference.”
These links can also be to other blogs, since many activists create a community of people writing about the same passions. Susan Herring is a Professor of Information Science at IU who specializes in computer-mediated communications. In her report, Conversations from the Blogosphere: An Analysis “From the Bottom Up,” Herring used a snowball approach to track links. She followed all of the links on the first site, and branched out from there, following every link to see who was connected in the blogosphere.
“It seems that there are parts of the blogs that are very densely connected, but the vast majority of them are selectively interconnected,” Herring says. People with common interests stick together very tightly, and as blogs become increasingly dynamic, links help increase the power of information exchange.
Mainstream media and blogs certainly have their conflicts. Bloggers are accused of not being real journalists, and the media is criticized for not telling the stories people want to hear. However, the rise of so-called citizen journalism has both forms of communication working together.
MSNBC.com dedicates a section of its website to citizen journalists, which lets people write for free on a mainstream media outlet. Right now, everyday citizens who witnessed the recent Indonesian earthquake that killed 1,000 people are submitting their reports of the event. No reporter could compile a story better than the people who were actually there.
Steve Outing is the current senior editor for Poynter online, and an expert in online media. The Poynter Institute is a school that focuses on helping journalists achieve excellence.
“You can definitely look at it as a way of expanding the scope and the coverage like a newspaper would do,” Outing says. “If you recruit community bloggers to cover things the newspaper doesn't have the resources to cover itself - epecially something local that is too minute to send a reporter - that can really enhance traditional newspaper.”
Claybourn acknowledges that the media understands the power of average people and the Internet. “Everyone has their own printing press and the people in power are threatened by that.” The mainstream media is now using all of its resources, and citizens aren't looking back. Blogs will only continue to grow, according to Claybourn, because businesses have yet to tap into their full potential. He believes that because blogs represent such a niche group of people, the possibilities for advertising are endless. When people are making a profit off of their blog through ads, it will become more important to them and to readers.
As for the future, Herring says it's already here. “There was so much hype a couple years ago about the blogging revolution and how it was going to replace mainstream journalism. I think that weblogs are changing things already.”
On a national level, Claybourn knows that mainstream media will always be necessary, but locally, bloggers are digging into the full spectrum of the news to establish their place now and in the future. “What was once on C12 is now on A1.” Are blogs a postive or negative influence as information providers? Tell Lisa what you think. For more information consult these sites: A review of the influence of blogs
Click here to read more about Josh Claybourn's innovative blog
Page designed and edited by: Kathleen Taylor Last Updated: May 2, 2005
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