Egypt, the NY Times & Braided Journalism

The tweet post went up this morning from the New York Times: ”If you’re in Egypt, or in contact with someone in Egypt, we’d love to have photos and video from the scene. Send to: pix@nyt.com.”

It is a fresh example of a concept that I call “braided journalism.” It is the idea that professional and citizen journalists will merge resources to provide broader and deeper coverage of events in the world, particularly during crises such as earthquake, fire, plane crash or in this morning’s example. Street revolution.

Two factors have led to braided journalism:

1. Traditional media has been cutting reporters, stringers and correspondents for two decades. This severely curtails their ability to cover fast-breaking, unexpected events.
2. People everywhere are now connected through social media where we share news, information, ideas, photos, audio and video. In short, we are the new feet on the street.

In my book, Twitterville, I wrote a braided journalism chapter. It covered examples that included accidental journalists, such as an American vacationing on the beaches of Thailand when a tsunami hit, A Dutch kid in a Chinese bookstore about to Skype home for money when an earthquake hit; street photographers in Mumbai when terrorist went on a killing spree, citizens feeding photos of civilian casualties in Gaza to Jazeera, and the unforgettable photo of a plane landing on the Hudson taken by a young tweeter named Janis Krums.

At one point I wrote a book proposal, but no publishers made an offer. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe traditional publishers don’t like topics that include the death of traditional media companies as a central theme.

In any case, I put braided journalism on my back shelf and went on with others subjects. But lately the subject keeps re-emerging as it did with the NY Times post this morning.

Yesterday, Shel Holtz Skype video interviewed me for a talk I’m giving in Berkeley for the Social Media Breakfast East Bay in a couple of weeks. I’m going to discuss social media trends and Shel wanted to know if I would talk about braided journalism as an emerging trend.

The stories I just shared with you are getting long-of-tooth in Internet years, meaning they are over one year old, so I skipped telling them. Instead, I said braided journalism is morphing. I pointed to Tom Foremski, who has been pushing the concept that every company is now a media company because it can post it’s own content.

I also mentioned a few experiments in which companies have hired journalists to post content about themselves on company sites. The posts are transparent and the reports are paid by the hosts. In the old model wewere paid by sponsors. I’ve been involved in a couple of these projects and have been pleased by the laissez faire approach of the companies and the end results as they appeared.

This morphing helps those of us who make parts of our living by writing, but it is hardly as world-changing tweeting and video recording from the streets of Iran, Tunisia and Egypt.

But then that little tweet came through from the Times this morning. It doesn’t appear to be much any dramatic game-changer, but to me it is. It is the first time that I have seen a traditional media company call out for content to citizen journalists who are on scenes where extremely few traditional journalists have access.

The press has historically disdain citizen journalists. John Markoff once likened us to CB Radio buffs of earlier years. We’ve been called a lot worse. Social media people have not always spoken kindly of traditional media either.

But the truth is the world will be a better informed place if citizen and traditional media braid together, particularly when covering crises. No blogger on earth has the collective credibility and distribution capabilities of the New York Times. As talented as we are. They are still the disciplined professionals, as flawed as they are.

To me this is a huge issue. We may still have a free press, but without the resources to cover news when and where it breaks, that press is not free to do it’s job in the way that it needs to be done.

At one point I wrote a book proposal, but no publishers made an offer. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe traditional publishers don’t like topics that include the death of traditional media companies as a central theme.

In any case, I put braided journalism on my back shelf and went on with others subjects. But lately the subject keeps re-emerging as it did with the NY Times post this morning.

The stories I just shared with you are getting long-of-tooth in Internet years, meaning they are over one year old. I told him that braided journalism is morphing. I pointed to Tom Foremski, who has been pushing the concept that every company is now a media company because it can post it’s own content.

I mentioned a few experiments in which companies have hired journalists to post content about themselves on company sites. The posts are transparent and the reports are paid by the hosts. In the old model we were paid by sponsors. I’ve been involved in a couple of these projects and have been pleased by the laissez faire approach of the companies and the end results as they appeared.

This morphing helps those of us who make parts of our living by writing, but it is hardly as world-changing tweeting and video recording from the streets of Iran, Tunisia and Egypt.

But then that little tweet came through from the Times this morning. It doesn’t appear to be much any dramatic game-changer, but to me it is. It is the first time that I have seen a traditional media company call out for content to citizen journalists who are on scenes where extremely few traditional journalists have access.

The press has historically disdained citizen journalists. John Markoff once likened us in the NY Times to CB Radio buffs of earlier years. We’ve been called a lot worse. Social media people have not always spoken kindly of traditional media either.

But the truth is the world will be a better informed place if citizen and traditional media braid together, particularly when covering crises. No blogger on earth has the credibility and distribution capabilities of the New York Times. As talented as we may be, we are still the amateurs. As flawed as they are, they are still professionals and trained in ways that many of us are not.

To me this is a huge issue. We may still have a free press, but without the resources to cover news when and where it breaks, that press is not free to do it’s job in the way that it needs to be done.