We News Panel

Merrill Brown introduced We Media’s first session, "We News," saying that it’s ironic that the first panel is not necessarily ‘we media’, but ‘the media.’ Farai Chideya, Tom Curley, Larry Kramer and Richard Sambrook, all very respected figures of ‘the media’ sat on the panel. Brown asked each to briefly tell why they were here.

Chideya explained her varied journalism career, saying that now she was ‘drifting through the new media world without any roots’ but that now she is beginning to embrace the dated term ‘convergence.’ She’s now trying to figure out how to best serve her audience through all media.

Curley explained that this using citizen contributors is something that AP has done throughout its history and introduced a series of images of major events including the World Trade Tower attacks and the tsunami disaster captured by citizens. Curley said that he is at the conference to learn as well.

Kramer began by describing a revamping of CBS News’ website, saying that the goal is to treat stories ‘more like a loop.’ Stories don’t end when they are published but are just starting through reactions by the public. Because of its size, CBS thought that their citizen contributions need to be more filtered than most, they needed a moderator for Public Eye. Three people are designated to find criticism on the Web for the site and engage the public more on Public Eye. Reacting to viewers "makes us better reporters."

Sambrook said that the strength of any media organization depends on its relationship with the public. If media doesn’t embrace the new relationship provided by the Internet, then they are going to loose touch with their readers/viewers. He used the example of the July 7th bombings where the BBC received large amounts of citizen material. The following days news included a video compiled from citizen contributions, the first time that such a newscast had ever taken place. ‘The BBC does not own the news anymore but our job is to make connections between and with the audience.’