Synopses & Reviews
The current woes of journalism have received widespread attention: declining readership, failing publishers, complaints of bias and irrelevancy. How can we live in an information age unless we have access to accurate information? This book delves into the potential of collaborative news making with practical, tested advice for consumers and creators alike.
Students, journalists, and anyone concerned with the future of democratic debate will find strategies and techniques for making the news vibrant again. Amateurs will learn how to swim with the pros. And if you have been a passive consumer of news, you'll understand why, and how, becoming an active participant in media will help you navigate a world with nearly infinite sources of information.
Author Dan Gillmor was one of the leading journalists in the high-tech world before leaving for academic research and practical experiments in the field of participatory journalism. Mediactive is accompanied by a website, http://mediactive.com, that tracks the news and trends in this burgeoning field.
This book includes:
- Strategies for finding and creating credible, reliable information
- Key principles for media consumers and creators, such as transparency and inclusiveness
- How journalism can thrive in a digital world, and why it still matters
- How some laws and societal norms need to be upgraded in an age of citizen media
- How schools, parents, and media creators can lead the way in bringing these principles to a new generation
About the Author
Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by and for the Bay Area." Gillmor is is author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters.From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmorreceived a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalismawards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.