The emergence of ‘Braided Journalism’

[ Flight 1549 lands on the Hudson, a fine Braided Journalism moment. Photo by Janis Krums]

As I’ve mentioned, my favorite Twitterville chapter is called “Braided Journalism.” The chapter covers Twitter’s role in Mumbai, Gaza, the Szechwan Earthquake, the landing of US Air Flight 1549 on the Hudson, the video recorded New Year’s Day BART shooting and a good many other instances where citizen and traditional journalism have converged in social media spaces.

The book was locked up on June 12, the day of the Iran Elections, an incident which showed how fast new events eclipse the old in this category. The concluding point of the chapter is that traditional and citizen journalism are converging. “We have become the feet on the streets of the world when news breaks,” I wrote.

Yet, most reasonable people realize the world will not be a better place, if the discipline, ethics and professionalism of traditional media disappears. I may no longer see a purpose for a daily newspaper delivered to my door by a fossil burning vehicle, but I most certainly see a value for the New York Times and its long-established standards for excellence. I look at the former Christian Science Monitor, whose slow death as a tangible newspaper was followed by the welcomed excellence of the CSMonitor.com which has risen like a phoenix from the newspaper’s ashes.

This thing that I call braided journalism seems to be emerging everywhere in a variety of forms styles and focuses.

One of my favorites has little to do with events of the scope and importance of say Iran or Mumbai. Take for example, girl’s basketball. A former NBA sports reporter grew passionate about his sport finding it less tainted than even boys sports. So he started a blog site called Hoopgurlz as a citizen journalism project. He got some sponsorship and then ESPN acquired it where it is now flourishing as is he, I assume.

Some laid off Baltimore Sun reporters regrouped and started BaltimoreBrew, a sponsored blog dedicated to “stirring up news and views,” and has started getting sponsorship to allow them to do work the Baltimore Sun apparently can no longer afford to do. On a global level, ProPublica, established in part by ex-LA Times reporters is a volunteer network of investigative reporters who were concerned that the kind of digging that made journalism different and superior to the fluff that fills so many surviving news columns, was becoming a luxury during tough economic times. There news is often the stuff the Pulitzers should be made of such as their recent look at nurses whose criminal records go undetected.

The NY Times, has taken a different route and weaves the locals on the street with pro journalists with something called “The Local.” It is breaking new ground with a braided journalism experiment covering two largely ignored Brooklyn neighborhoods, giving the type of hometown, dig-under-the-fingernails coverage he every community deserves.

I could not go very far in any direction related to braided journalism, without stumbling across the Miami-based Knight Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the betterment of journalism, started in 1950 with some of the considerable profits gleaned by the formerly venerable Knight-Ridder newspaper empire.

Since 1950, the Knight Foundation, “dedicated to excellence in journalism,” has helped in the education of over 100,000 journalists and has contributed north of $1 billion toward the betterment of information quality at the community level.

In recent years more and more of Knight’s efforts have gone toward projects that are based online. There’s little doubt their efforts will change. They seem to be in a catbird position for the emergence of a new generation of Web-based media that will incorporate new media with time-established ethics and practices.

This is an area of emerging interest to me, and I think importance to how people will get their information in the coming decades. I will revisit some of the organizations mentioned here and I would love to hear from you if you can point to evidence of convergence between traditional and citizen journalism in social media venues.

I am always on the outlook for a next book possibility and Braided Journalism is among those that captures my personal passion. Bt whether it becomes a book or not, depends on what I find and to an almost equal degree, what people tell me here and on Twitter.