Scaramouche (1952, George Sidney) The Bride versus Johnny Mo fighting on the railing.

An influence across generations.

While I'm reading how memes diffuse through the blogosphere in hours and days.

I love the web.

Brian Sarrazin turned me on to this Social Networking Forum at Cal. Wednesday, April 28th, 2004, 7p-9:15 pm. Wells Fargo Room on the Haas Campus. Topics look worthwhile:

• the economic incentives of SNT and the concept of “incrementalism”
• the efficacy of SNT in building long-term relationships
• the opportunities of ubiquitous computing, efficient user interfaces, database scaling and more intelligent query engines
• the global marketplace as facilitated by SNT; market consolidation

The poor sods roped onto the panel: Eytan Adar of HP, Bobby Chao of Chinese friendster YeeYoo.com, VC Skip Fleshman, Andy Halliday of Spoke (formerly of In-Q-Tel), and Marti Hearst of Cal SIMS. Bonus: PhD Research Presentation by Harvard's Wayne Lim. $15 includes a quick dinner; rui@berkeley.edu for tickets. Bring Bullfighter but listen to voices of skepticism and experience, to what isn't said.

[aka community]

Out of the millions who blog, a handful do what professionals call journalism. Would more be better? Should we actively promote citizen journalism?

We could.

• Local Civic Journalism clubs.
• A full blown track in public school starting at age 8.
• An awards ceremony like the Pulitzer for best CJ reporting, best analysis, best thread, best catch of something missed by major media.
• Grants to develop curriculum for Business, Science, Public Affairs, Sports reportage.
• A professional guild helping CJers get press credentials and access like any news network.
• Legal services for bloggers to protect sources, file FOIAs, use sunshine ordinances, and defend IP.

And this is just for plain old text.

What will citizen journalism look like in 2009? My wild ass speculation: (like anyone will remember this post)

1. Moblogging comes into its own. Photos at a campaign stump speech by attendees outnumber those taken by photojournalists. And some aren't in bad light, of the back of someone's head, of the floor, with a finger over the lens, or from 10,000 feet away. Some will capture the spirit of an event and a defining moment. Long bet: By 2010 I'd be very surprised if ubiquity alone doesn't find us with a cell phone photo (or whatever we wind up calling them in 6 years) winding up above-the-fold on a major newspaper story, featured on the evening news, and gracing the cover of Time Magazine. A generation ago, big media adapted to electronic news gathering. The public continues that trend as the diffusing technology follows Moore's Law (more, better, faster, cheaper, smaller).  
2. Campaign coverage.
• A blogger on the presidential campaign bus.
• Designated bloggers at each meetup, taking photos and posting the minutes.
• Campaign aggregators, by location, topic, and affiliation go up 5 minutes after the home page.
• Local reporters become editors for local bloggers, compiling their accounts of the campaign.  
3. Personal video blogging becomes a staple of the portals and ISPs, a reason for customers to adopt broadband. And buy shiny tiny new digital video cams. Even laggards will have Logitech cams delivered with their just to be in on the conference call at work or to talk with family. First evidence: surging video camera aftermarket.  
4. Video syndication. We'll be moving more video en masse. RSS enclosures, anyone?.  As we're seeing in China's blocking of weblogs and other news sources, people route around censorship. P2P news distribution offers that alternative. Even for text news, P2P distribution of RSS and cached feeds let the network scale up.
5. News discovery systems, like Google News, will expand reach from the thousands of traditional news publishers to a broad selection of personal publishers. At first it's to weed out P.R. pros and to find reliable streams of general interest subject expertise. Eventually, they'll learn that the sixth-grade blogger has something meaningful to say about Outkast, worth sharing.
6. Blog juice. TV news and online editions of newspapers will explore ways to co-opt cheap content. Bloggers as stringers? Look for a play from the Classified Advertising department to annotate listings with fresh context from blogs, especially in smaller markets. Maybe even sharing revenue with popular bloggers. Example: citizen reportage on housing, neighborhoods put in with real estate listings.  
7. Stringer status. I'll bet hundreds of bloggers earn stringer accreditations from national news services and local news media. Not for everyone, but those willing to subscribe to journalism's standards will find this an edge.
8. Do you want it fast or good? Most blogging is about fast, slashing the distance between idea and paper. But video is inherently more interesting after post production. Home studio software adds polish. Voice overs, teleprompters, transitions, stock music, green screen backgrounds, titles. Nonlinear editing tools like Final Cut Pro will emerge in free/cheap format.
9. Extension. News isn't homogeneous, it's specific. Chess reporters have standard ways of representing game play. As do those who cover soccer/futbol. Or obituaries. Or police blotters. Or movie reviews. Watch for structural extensions to standard blogging, new blanks in the forms tailored to the application. And for clever ways to share new extensions.
10. History. Opposition research teams will hire specialists to comb campaign, activist, and lobbyist weblogs for dirt. Every weblog post from this election cycle is fair game. Would this help or hurt Kos's election chances?
11. En mi primera lengua. News translations on the fly, continuing a reverse cultural imperialism where English absorbs ideas and words from around the world. RSS and Atom will face semitic times of day and non-Gregorian calendars.
12. VNRs. Video News Releases will come along with citizen journalism. Citizen flackery and propaganda.
13. My News Station. We saw a handcrafted version of this in the Dean campaign. HowardDean.tv used DishTV, cable news, and hacked TiVos to collect news. They also collected video from the field, from students and volunteers, and cut it into a daily TV news program. That will become automatic. News aggregators (Bloglines) and discovery systems (Google News (clusters by topic), Technorati (clusters by reference), Daypop (what's hot)) will group and cut together syndicated videos based on location, time, and subject; create a montage of related footage; and stream a custom video channel just for you. 
14. Community stations. Following Hoder's advice on regional blogosphere building, we'll see "people's news" become a trusted alternative to state and corporate media. Military professionals will prioritize community blog servers right after radio and television stations. It won't happen in this decade because John Kerry should be able to keep the peace for the next 8 years, but the next time a country fears an attack by the US, watch their blogosphere come under attack from within.
15. Big screens enter. What do you do with a 250 megapixel monitor? Something 5 feet tall by 8 feet wide at paper resolution? Could you create a dynamic montage of video and stills that reflected your interests over time, relative popularity and proximity of news stories. The World Wide Wall® of News: a must for every corporate Chief, political war room, and mayor.  

Where do you think citizen journalism be in 2010?

[aka community]