Online Journalism

I thought my enthusiasm for journalism has long died since I decided to turn down the job offers from two Chinese "party-organ" newspapers in 2001. But it does not seem to be the case until I encountered quite a few events/people/perspectives recently.

The first one is my visit to Manila when typhoon ripped off the ceiling of my hotel in Makita city. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism was celebrating its 20th anniversary and held a three-day conference on democracy and media. A haunting ghost that keeps bothering these respectful journalists (most of whom are on the front line of fighting for freedom and democracy in their countries) is neither the corrupted and ineffective government nor the anti-democratic social forces. It is - new media! Yes, the Internet is more troublesome than the powerful institutions because when journalists share some consensus on how to fight with the established powers, they rarely associate themselves with bloggers who try to report news.

My colleague and dear friend Lokman Tsui wrote a small but insightful piece on technology and journalism in the book "The Changing Faces of Journalism". He pointed out that technology threatens journalism in two ways - its institution and its principles/values. It is clearly the case that my fellow conference attendees are afraid of bloggers who never get trained "properly" and know little about the "professional" practices - they are not subject to the constraints of the journalism institution. The other facet of this worry is that even journalists are willing to incorporate bloggers into their routine, the key is to identify the "qualified" ones - the ones who share the same values and hold to the same principles.

One week after Makita, I was headed to Association of Internet Researchers 10th annual conference in Milwaukee, USA. What was big in this year's conference is online activism - how activists use the technology to organize social movements, dissident actions, and so on. Twitter, Second Life, and Facebook. These are all new tools that excited us. But when activists post pictures of policemen firing tear gas on twitter, are they doing a journalist job as well? An interesting concept that I mostly find in developing countries is called activist journalism. The values and principles associated with this model are quite different from what we often see in the NYTimes type of journalism. Objectiveness is surrendered to activism. Balance is considered as lack of political progressiveness. One journalist in Makita asked this question: "who do you speak for?" That is where I see the possibility of two worlds - the traditional journalism and the online journalism - reconcile with each other.

If journalism is not just for discovering truth (even partial truth), if journalism in transitional societies has goals more than objectiveness, online journalism could be considered as following a different model and should have its own legitimate role in journalism, too.

The circle became full after I met Prof. Yuen-Ying Chan from the Journalism and Media Studies Center, the University of Hong Kong. The technology training they provide to journalists is ahead of many advanced bloggers (Link1, Link2). So why not we train journalists as well as bloggers to be activists who advocate for social changes? Put the occupational pride aside, embrace the technology with principles and values - not necessarily the NYTimes type - and in this moment, I regret my change of life course from the journalist profession.

But, I can still teach!