News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation and The People Formerly Known as the Audience

The title given to this week’s discussion is “Rethinking the Public.” I think that we’re not so much “rethinking” the public as we are including the public. Rosen refers to news changing from a lecture to a conversation, which means two-way communication, a back-and-forth between not only journalists and an audience, but now between members of the audience as well. A shift has occurred from a top-down, vertical hierarchy of delivering news, to a horizontal flow that encourages participation. People have always reacted, discussed and debated the news and its coverage, but did so in private realms between known acquaintances. Now, that discussion is available in a public, online forum.

In response to one of the discussion questions, I think neither the audience nor the media has more power. I think it is now shared. Rosen calls it a “shift in power.” He relates to two comments that describes power moving away from the “centroids,” large, media outlets toward the individuals who are considered to be on the edge. These "edglings," or the public, share and participate through open technology. I personally don’t think one group or another has control, that control is moving, or even that it’s shifting. I think it is expanding to encompass all, the entire world community, including media giants, journalists and ordinary citizens alike. News and its power is no longer exclusive, like Rosen writes, but inclusive. The things that the news industry has lost, so to speak, from this evolution is its exclusiveness, monopoly, and primary decisiveness in choosing and publishing the news. The public doesn’t wish to control the media; they just want to be an active part of it, by “taking part, debating, creating, communicating and sharing.”

Both Rosen and another article I found mention that some of the fears of journalists and news organizations is that blogs will take over the news industry, drive it out of business and that journalism isn’t considered journalism if it doesn’t undergo an editorial process. The article I found said that neither is the case, nor will it ever be. The author of the article, J.D. Lasica explains that most viewers will get their “fix” from traditional news stories and that blogging complements the original coverage in more depth, with more analysis, alternative perspectives, and sometimes first person accounts (p. 73). It used to be that once news was printed, it was finished. This is no longer true, thanks to the creation of an active audience through blogs and threads on news articles allowing for comments online. The role of the press now is to encourage the conversation by prompting it with a particular story.

Another discussion question asks if journalists should feel threatened by the emergence of bloggers. The answer is no. Lasica also addresses something that was mentioned in one of Rosen’s blogs which is competing for readers’ eyeballs. Instead, journalism and blogging, as mentioned before, complement and play off each other and intersect. Blogging has expanded journalism’s role by making it more accessible and interactive. I think blogging makes journalism richer because news is constantly being updated and evolving through dialogue and it reaches a wider audience.

I think things have just evolved, not simply changed. Mentioned in the leader's blog, the publisher-audience relationship still remains, it is just now a loop, not a pipe. I think this change should be welcomed, in order to ensure a sense of community involvement. By encouraging this level of shared and active participation, I feel like it opens more opportunities for the public to be informed, especially when they can discuss, question, and learn about what most interests them, not what news media outlets think is important or interesting.

Questions:
1) What is the role of a blogger? What should it be?
2) What does it mean to be a member of the audience? Can there still be an audience even though they now are sharing and publishing their ideas?
3) Lecture is to audience as conversation is to __________?