This is a year-end reflection of a blogger. I started my meditation blog in 2006 but did not really on to it. Then I knew citizen journalism websites, it made me more interested in blogging. My first post to the citizen journalism websites started in February 2007 it was not a full year experience, but it made me easier to analyze and reflect my own articles.
I talked about visits and points I got in wikimu's article. Not a good rate comparing to visits for my OMNI's article. Perhaps other contributors have better visit (either in wikimu or in OMNI). I am not really keen on visits and points if not for its readers' mapping. Actually I would like to have comments or articles that could help to outline my readers' mapping.
Below is my personal views and reflection that I did not convey in that article.
I have hinted from some contributors that serious news were not really high in readers' appreciation. I've got the same feeling. Hopefully through this we could see the need of online readers.
Before writing for a newspaper I used to study it for a while. I need to be its reader before I can submit my articles. Yet, readers in the internet are so varied...and so universal as well!
I read that Steve Outing had to close his Enthusiast Group, and read his piece "An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media".
I've heard from Dan Gillmor about his "experiment" when I met him in Seoul. I've also read a lot about the phrase "Citizen Journalism is Death"...It wasn't...It is still here and survives in its own way!
Citizen Journalism has just awakened in Indonesia. Wikimu is different in the sense that they are more into citizen. Kabar Indonesia is more into news. I can see the difference between the real article written by a contributor for wikimu and his other piece in Kabar Indonesia. The editors over there works a lot!
With OhmyNews I had to do the editing myself, the editor over there will only help me seeing through their perspective, and their final touch usually has something to do with the link and my English language presentation. When doing my piece for Ohmynews I did it the way I used to do my piece for mainstream media. I was even more careful as it will be read by universal readers, perhaps some of them did not even know where or what is Indonesia!
It is for the citizen or for the journalist? In wikimu the citizen got their chance to really talk. They use it as they wish...short or long, self-centered story or nation-centered story...it's really up to the contributors. The editors were sometimes confused over up loading articles, sometimes it would not fitted in journalistic term but it has valuable content for the community. Wikimu will grow up with their community. The readers are happy to be citizen, they reports things that matter to them. I saw that it help journalists in predicting their readers' interests. It helps them to provide better and deeper analyst in their own paper.
I do not like the term "grassroots journalism" as here in Indonesia if we talked about the real "grassroots", perhaps they are those who are not even able to know computer and the internet! The grassroots are busy to be able to make their daily bread accessible! They probably had to discontinue their children's study out of their economic burden! That is why I prefer the term "citizen journalism", being the citizen of the world! And as a citizen of the world we are also responsible to voice out the voice of the marginalized people.
I do have my financial problem, but as I am still able to connect into the internet that would means that I can still afford it as one of my priorities. There are more people out there who doesn't even know what to eat today and how to survive the next day. I do hope we'll be able to take the mainstream media, the government, and the world attention to help them.
My article on the lopers' day was the least popular one (loper is the Indonesian word for the newspaper boy). I think I'm gaining some lesson from the idol contest that not the most popular one got the quality, but to survive the marketing competition you've got to mixed them all!
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