Jack Rosenberry Journalism professor at St. John Fisher College Rochester NY
The Author Focus is a chance for authors of media books to tell us a little more about their work and experience. This week we ask Jack Rosenberry, journalism professor at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, about Public Journalism 2.0 a book he co-edited with Burton St. John.
So tell us about Public Journalism 2.0…
The book is an effort to help marry theory and practice so that citizen and participatory journalism can be a stronger and more effective source for encouraging greater understanding of civic issues and providing an impetus to solve public problems. In its early days public journalism was sometimes called “a theory in search of a practice”. But, as one of our contributors points out, participatory journalism often seems to be a practice in search of a theory. Maybe the theory that can inform the practice can be drawn from Public Journalism.
What do you see as the true aim of citizen journalism?
I’m not sure there is any one, true aim. The motives and purposes are as many and varied as the practitioners. The argument that Burton St. John and I try to articulate in the book is that there is a lot of unrealized potential for citizen journalism to really engage readers as citizens — with all that the term implies, especially acting in ways that promote and enhance the public good. Civic/public journalism was, broadly speaking, about trying to make public life go well. True citizen journalism can and should aspire to help members of the public to take greater responsibility for an active role in the public life of a society, and encourage them to do so.
How can citizen journalism function alongside more conventional journalism practices?
There’s a place for both in the emerging ecosystem of the news. A while back Roy Peter Clark of The Poynter Institute made a blog posting about “the fifth estate” with a bunch of wonderful analogies to other situations where the work of “amateurs” augments that of the professionals, things such as citizen crime patrols who help police, lay ministers who assist ordained clerics at church, and even by-standers with proper first aid training who provide assistance in medical emergencies. When I read his post I was inspired to blog about it myself because I really liked both the term and the analogies. What I liked most was that it helps in articulating exactly how the pro-am relationship ought to be conducted, which is something I think we struggle with.
In the book, Burton and I address this issue; the concluding chapter, in fact, is called “A Place for the Professionals.” The central argument is that the professional journalists have certain levels of training and expertise that citizen journalists can’t be expected to have — so there are certain tasks and types of coverage they are better equipped to do. On the other hand, citizens have definite and powerful contributions to make. By collaborating, in a pro-am model like some of the other professions in Clark’s analogies, each can help the other do their job better. Several chapters of the book examine and describe how this can happen, some from a more theoretical angle and others from a practical one.
Where else are we likely to see your work and what’s next in the pipeline?
After doing two books in the past three years — co-editing the latest and co-authoring the one just before it (Applied Mass Communication Theory: A Guide for Media Practitioners, Jack Rosenberry and Lauren A. Vicker, 2009, Pearson/Allyn & Bacon) — I think I’ll be scaling back for a little while to work on some shorter projects. I have a forthcoming research article on virtual communities that should appear in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly sometime this year, and my latest work-in-progress is a study of the impacts of anonymity in online reader comment forums.
What books are on your bedside table, magazines in your bag, or blogs on your screen?
Well, the books on my shelves are largely work-related, both the textbooks assigned in my classes and similar/related ones that I read to get ideas for material to present to the students. I like news magazines and trade pubs such as American Journalism Review and Columbia Journalism Review. My GoogleReader feeds include blogs from Jay Rosen, Mark Luckie and Jeff Jarvis, American University’s J-Lab, University of Southern California Annenberg School’s Online Journalism Review, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. In fact, Mark Coddington’s Week in Review feature for Nieman each Friday is one of my absolute must-reads. On Twitter I follow some journalism professor friends locally and from around the country, a few of my former students, and some local (Rochester NY) news providers.
If you’d like to read more from Jack, follow him on Twitter or check out his blog
