We the Media: The Rise of Open-Source, Grassroots Journalism

Dan Gillmor
www.dangillmor.com

The collision of media and technology has created enormous changes for all three major constituencies of journalism. Journalism is shifting from a lecture to a conversation; journalists must learn to listen and respond to an increasingly well-connected audience. Newsmakers, the people and institutions journalists cover, are the subject of new kinds of coverage, but can use the same tools to have own conversations directly with their own various constituencies. The (former) audience has vastly greater flexibility in the journalism it chooses, and can more easily become do journalism as well.

About the speaker:

Photo by Elisabeth Fall for O'Reilly Media

Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by and for the Bay Area." Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. Gillmor is is author of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People" (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters. His blog is at bayosphere.com/blog/dangillmor. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years. Books We the Media (O'Reilly) July 2004 Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. In We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, nationally known business and technology columnist Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make and consume the news. Shamelessly borrowed from the O'Reilly website.

Contact information:

Dan Gillmor
email: grassroots@gillmor.com