~a column by Colleen O’Brien
The latest on-the-spot news reporting is not email, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, it’s the “citizen journalist” via a new smart phone application called NewsByMe. The whole idea of this news-gathering and disseminating app will give seasoned journalists the willies; it’s giving me a minor headache as I ponder the possibilities of everyone playing the reporter.
We citizens have long let the media know what’s going on out here in the real world, away from the newsroom itself, so they could pursue it (or not) and then tell us all about it (or not). In this modern era, bystanders with Twitter and smart phone videoed the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, a horrific event where there were no reporters in place at all. The Arab Spring uprising in Tunisia in December of 2010 was initially covered by individuals before the pros got there; and this also happened at the Boston Marathon bombing two years ago this month.
To date, these citizen sources and their information and pictures, however good and immediate, have had to be directed to a particular receiver — a friend, a network of friends on Facebook, a news organization. If you’re not “friended”, you won’t know this particular news until someone tells you or you eventually see it on TV or in the paper.
Writing, photographing or videoing the story via NewsByMe on a smart phone, the ordinary Joe or Jill in the bleachers at the high school football game captures the quarterback getting concussed by the opposing lineman and posts it immediately on the app. Those reports will then appear within seconds on the electronic maps of other customers who have designated an interest in the general vicinity (say, a city, a county, a 50-mile radius).
If you’re the first one to see a house on fire, a tree down or an auto accident, you can be the reporter on the spot and send the news to others in the area who have acquired the application on their phones. Local news is known immediately, not later at the 10 pm news hour or in the paper that comes out in the morning. It allows anyone with a smart phone to report events around them in words, photos and video.
Many events never get aired in traditional media because of lack of reporters, time or space limitations, as well as the involved and lengthy process of a professional news organization, which has first to be informed about what’s happening, then send a reporter to see what’s going on (or phone someone who might be in the know, for info or verification), then write the story and have it checked by an editor, and then it may see the light of print, airwave or broadcast.
The fellow who designed this app is himself a longtime newsman, Pason Gaddis. He earned his BA at Iowa State and worked for the Iowa State Daily. He worked for Gannet. He started the 75,000 circulation Florida Weekly, which has won several awards in its brief eight years. In a recent interview in his own weekly newspaper, Gaddis said, in regard to his newly formed app,
“The two most formidable weapons in the rapidly shifting history of news reporting and event awareness — a smart phone and an alert human being.”
The app will work anyplace in the world, in any language. The development team tested in Florida, New York, Iowa (Des Moines area), San Francisco, London, Paris, Thailand, India and Japan.
His ads for NewsByMe read, “Isn’t it time we made the news for and by the people? Now you can both report and follow news posts in any geographic areas you select with NewsByMe, a mobile news-sharing app.”
And he assures viewers that administrators of the app will monitor new postings and be able to remove demonstrably false or illegal content. How they will do this is not explained. “But,” he adds, “for the most part, community interest will determine content, and community scrutiny will help edit out misconstrued or false reports and mere rumors.” Right.
This might be the way of the future as far as news goes, or it may never find its way. That Apple App Store has selected it is a good sign, at least for the new company, because Apple only promotes superior apps, so computer gossip says. That founder Gaddis is an experienced newsman with a techy side and an eye to the future is a good sign, or at least a hint of what’s to come. That we may soon have one more source for news is either a good sign or not, depending on your point of view on the already very full and often repetitive 24/7 news cycle we know so well.
And there is another view, my first thought when I read about NewsByMe: How invasive will this particular media be? Early-days’ Facebook users didn’t sign up with the concept of distributing nude photos of drunken co-eds, did they?
For more information about the new news, ask Mrs.Google about NewsByMe.
