Local Journalists' Attitudes towards User Contributions to the News

Cardiff.
The next speaker at Future of Journalism 2009 is Jane B. Singer, who presents a study of local journalists and their engagement with user-generated content. Such journalists are potentially a very different group, as they're already closely connected with the local community, but similar to other colleagues have to come to terms with changing news values, norms, roles, and processes. Like their colleagues elsewhere, they are concerned about how the rise of user-generated content is affecting the news.

One question here is about gatekeeping - this role continues to be seen as crucial by journalists, and there is sometimes a very defensive framing of this issue; British journalists, interestingly, see their role often as relatively neutral (as reporters, instructors, and educators), but of course their use of sources and - in some cases - dubious ethical practices can still substantially affect the news agenda. In Britain, there also still remains a strong audience for local news, even if they are in substantial financial strife, too.

What is being flagged as an alternative are moves towards a more dialogic form of journalism; this is seen as desirable by some, but is also very difficult. Those who contribute to dialogic journalistic initiatives are not necessarily those who such initiatives may hope to address.

Jane deployed a questionnaire about journalists attitudes towards UGC amongst employees of Johnston Press, publisher of some 300 local news publications in the UK and Ireland; for the most part, they saw benefits that related to what journalists thought they should be doing (providing leads, tips for stories, etc.), while democratic aspects of UGC were seen as desirable but not very tangible.

Journalists adamantly saw UGC as complementing - not replacing - their own work; concerns were about staffing, quality control, and legal liability. They also strongly felt a need for themselves to act as gatekeepers of these processes. Overall, journalists pointed to the importance of their own professional skills, of course, and called for a clear separation between professional and user-generated content. There was also a strong sense that not many users were interested in commenting on news stories, and that they would be unable to police their own online activities.

UGC was seen as most useful for community event listings, youth sports coverage, on-the-scenes reporting from users, traffic and travel updates, and community events coverage. What journalists found least valuable were personal user profiles, user podcasts, user wikis, user photos which were unrelated to news events, and a user reputation system. (Interestingly - worryingly? - many journalists also ticked 'don't know' in response to questions on wikis and reputation systems, though.)

There was strong concern about the supposedly relatively low quality of user-generated content, about inaccuracy, irrelevance, offensiveness, and bad writing. This was seen as debasing the jourrnalistic product and creating potential legal problems. Concerns about bias were also widespread. However, there were general supporting noises in favour of the democratic and diversity function of UGC, and a sense that UGC would drive more traffic to news sites.

Journalists also saw UGC as helping them do their jobs better; contributions of sources, leads, and even content were seen as useful raw material for journalists to write 'proper' content. Most UGC was seen as too trivial to bother with, though, and journalists thought it shouldn't appear on their Website at all. UGC benefits must also be weighed against the cost and time required for realing with it, they suggested.

The standard argument that journalists had specific professional skills not shared by users was also almost unanimously voiced; there was a fear that UGC would be seen by employers as a replacement for journalistic content. Most journalists also saw value in interactive and discursive roles for themselves, but did point to the cost and time limitations once again.

So, local journalists favour extending their gatekeeping role to include user contributions, but are worried about lacking the time, money, and ability to do so effectively. If not managed appropriately, they seen such an extension as a disservice to their readers, and have significant reservations about the nature of the discourse on UGC, and its effect on their product.

Technorati : FoJ 2009, citizen journalism, journalism, local journalism, news, participation, produsage, user-generated content
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