An Interview with Dan Gillmor

Entrevista realizada por María P. sandoval Campos para OHMYNEWS International Citizen Reporters:

The Internet is becoming more and more interactive. Thanks to blogs, wikis, citizen newspapers and other Websites there are now many places were users can produce content.

These instances have been dubbed Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 consisted of flat texts, among them the faithful transcriptions of newspapers without a greater development of design or updates.

Web 3.0 recognizes the amazing possibility of including multimedia within the stories.

I decided to discuss this phenomenon further with Dan Gillmor, founder and director of Citizen Media, an initiative to heighten and extend grassroots journalism.

His book We, the Media is a well known publication among those interested in grassroots journalism.

I spoke to Mr Gillmor at the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul in July 2006.

What do you say to people who say that blogs and citizen journalism are just a passing fad?

There is always a lot of interest in something new, and then people wonder if it is a fad. I don't think this is the case with blogging or citizen journalism. Many bloggers do stop after a while, but many more take up blogging. Citizen journalism is very new, meanwhile; we are only just beginning to figure out how it will work.

What are the strong and weak points of citizen journalism?

The strongest point is that there is no barrier to entry. Anyone can try it, and when a large number of people try anything we always find at least a few who do it well. Citizen journalists are covering topics that traditional media organizations don't cover, which means we get more journalism about "niche" topics.

The weakest point is that there are key principles in quality journalism, and not every citizen journalist either knows what they are or cares. We need to find ways to bring the high-quality material to the surface.

What is the role of journalism?

The most important role of journalism in any society is to have a better informed citizenry, so people can make better decisions about their lives and the course of their societies.

Has the population fully understood the power they have in the new Internet reality?

No, we're not even close to achieving this. It will take many years, perhaps decades, before we understand the medium well enough, and have good enough tools, to organize ourselves as we should. Collaboration and communication are the essential values of the Net, in my view.

There is a digital divide between the countries that are developed and those that are not. Is this digital divide also visible in Internet content too and the use of the Net for citizen journalism?

Technological improvements will make the hardware affordable for an increasing percentage of humanity. Someday, the $100 Internet computer will be an expensive device, not a goal that sounds inexpensive.

But the divide will exist as long as some societies have no access to modern technology, but more important is the gap between those who don't struggle every day to survive and those who must. We have bigger problems on the planet than access to the Net.