Jeff Jarvis has been describing blogs, webcams and other online self-publishing channels as "citizens' media" for some months now. He may not have coined the term, but I associate it with him because he's done so much interesting writing on the subject. And today was no exception:
It's wonderful watching what I think is a global warming in mainstream media toward citizens' media.
We may just be at the tipping point.
The latest evidence of the attitude shift is FoxNews' MediaWatch cordial discussion about major media using citizens (Trey Jackson has the video). It's a nice little wink from Fox that the crawl on the screen as the panel talked said, "You report, you decide."
It may or may not be a coincidence -- I'll bet it's not -- but this comes only days after Fox boss Rupert Murdoch gave a speech pushing the idea of mainstream media using citizens' media...
I know of the heads of at least three national TV news operations who are eager to incorporate citizens' media; I know of more newspaper editors who are finally siddling [I'm assuming he means "sidling."] up to the concept. I hear less and less of the dismissive jabs from big-time editors about small-time citizen journalists. Blogs are now a regular feature on MSNBC and CNN. Bloggers are getting quoted in newspapers and credited with big stories (Trend, Dan, et al). Newspapers are getting published with citizens' news.
It's spreading. It's tipping.
If it hasn't tipped already. And this mainstreaming of citizens' media has huge implications for nonprofits. In one way or another, all nonprofits play an advocacy role. They're in the business of changing minds, whether it's explicitly through lobbying or education, or implicitly through their fundraising and marketing efforts. They're laboring mightily to get you to think differently about something--and, as a result, to support a cause, send a message, make a donation.
But for the most part, nonprofits are failing to make effective use of citizens' media in these efforts. Nonprofits are still thinking like the mainstream media were three years ago. The media saw themselves as the professionals, the experts, and everyone else was part of the audience--they were readers or viewers. Nonprofits also see themselves as experts on their particular set of issues, and everyone else is part of their audience--they're donors or voters or petition-signers, or some variation on that them.
But the mainstream media (and other major corporations) have finally realized three things:
- It's a big world out there, and the Web brings together a lot of smart, dedicated people--including plenty of amateurs who know as much as the experts on any given subject.
- Those smart, dedicated amateurs now have the tools at their disposal to generate copious amounts of polished, compelling and essentially free content.
- If you're a gatekeeper in some way (because of your audience, your brand, or your expertise), and you don't involve those amateur self-publishers in your operation, they will bypass you and render you increasingly irrelevant. If you do get them involved, they will be an incredibly cost-efficient and powerful resource--but you can't control them, you can only hope to enlist them in your cause.
Nonprofits need to wise up to these realities as well, and engage people not merely as donors or voters, but as citizen advocates, as brothers- and sisters-in-arms who in many cases know as much about the issues as nonprofit staff and who have the desire and the means to do more than write a check or pull a lever.
