David Randall on citizen journalism and reporting

I have separated my post on Mr. Randall`s guest lecture at University of Sheffield in two, it seems more digestible this way.

Talking about the future of journalism in increasingly digital and immediate times, Mr. Randall asked how many times a citizen journalist (blogger) had reported on matters of national or international significance. The auditorium went silent, possibly due to his somewhat intimidating presence, but to be honest I couldn`t really think of a single occasion.

When writing this, I have come up with some examples. During the 7/7 bombings in London, the first dramatic photographs came from Londoners trapped underground, who recorded the scenes with their mobile phones. Many of these photographs were quickly available to the world, not on television screens or newspapers, but on Bloggers` websites. William Hachten and Scott F. Scotten wrote about this in The World News Prism. The book offer good analysis of significant news events as well as insight on current global media developments and trends.

On the secrets of being a good reporter, Mr. Randall pointed at fanatical curiosity, being a compulsive reader of anything and the ability to apply intelligence to what you`re writing about. Sounds good, doesn`t it? In his own words, though in a different context: "It does take a bit of an ego to survive this crap". He later had a question from the auditorium, "Is The Independent the best newspaper in UK?", at which he answered "Yes", giving a brilliant example to what sort of answer you`ll get when asking a closed question.

Mr. Randall pointed at Metafilter.com as a news site worth reading. I thought it`s worth mentioning.