New England News Forum
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Dave Mathison, author of Be the Media is opening Sharing the news: Reaching students, training citizens New England News Forum ‘s one-day event here at UMass Lowell (watch it live here, follow #nenf on Twitter) Warning: live blogging, expect mistakes. A small group with a mix of community news, students and education folks here, plus a couple folks from professional media outlets. Looking forward to meeting folks from well-known community news sites the Forum and New Haven Independent to hearing about what journalism educators are thinking about participatory media.
Dave is a “traditional” cyberutopian, anyone can do it, cut out the middleman, don’t let the artist be treated like slave labor, self-publish, get on facebook and twitter, etc. “What about credibility?” is heard muttered nearby during his presentation (can you guess that I’m sitting with the professional journalists?). In fact, when we get beyond the 1000 true fans who can support an independent rock musician to discussions of hard news (he reminds folks he did used to work at Reuters) Dave admits that he doesn’t actually think editors and editorial judgment will go away, in fact he predicts an “explosion of the need for editors and editorial judgment,” but it will exist in new structures.
Image: Photo of David Mathison taken on my phone
