4. Useful skills for the citizen journalist
Journalism, like democracy, is not something that is achieved. It is a work in progress, and not every day is as good as the last… John Maxwell Hamilton.
THE SKILLS we need as citizen journalists depends on the type of journalism we plan to engage in. So does the equipment we use.
Writing and photography are the basic skills of citizen journalism. So too is staying up to date with trends, practice and ideas within the topics we plan to report on.
Mediating reality
Our work as citizen journalists mediates some reality to an audience. This is not value-free because the words we use, the questions we ask and the way we interpret what we find affects reader perceptions and unerstandings.
In many situations, especially where our audience doesn’t have the opportunity to delve further into some topic, all they will have is what we provide. This is an opportunity for the unscrupulous and deceptive to misinform and mislead. For us, it is a responsibility to inform as accurately and adequately as available information allows.
Doing this is a responsibility if we want our audience, whether they are a broader, general audience, a special interest audience or members of an organisation we write for, to be able to make informed decisions and to gain a rounded comprehension of something. We won’t get it right all the time.
Sources can provide partial or biased information
The information we provide is only as good as our sources and sometimes even friendly sources can deliberately provide only limited or biased information. Especially when speaking for an organisation, they might provide only partial information because they subscribe to what has been called the pervasive ‘cult of secrecy’ that infects many organisations. As well as misusing the excuse of confidentiality when things do not need to be kept confidential, this deprives audiences of a fuller understanding.
When this happens, audiences will be quick to blame the journalist for not providing accurate information and ignore the only-partial information the source provides. As citizen journalists we do not have the resources to spend a lot of time investigating or researching that mainstream media organisations have. All we can do is ask ourselves whether what a source, whether that is a person or whether made available as written or other information, is likely to be the whole story or whether we need to go to other sources so as to report a more-complete understanding.
A good example of failing to do this this occurred in Sydney when the Eastern Courtier, a local newspaper, quoted a woman who was complaining about the removal of a number of small, stunted, crepe myrtle trees from a community centre. The reporter simply took what she said as truth. She, the reporter, did not contact the council to ask why the small trees, which were blocking access from the community centre building to the open space beyond, were removed. Had she done that she would have learned that the shelter pergola that was to be built and would include a diverse range of native plants and open up passage from the building to the open space.
This was a good example of lazy journalism. Only later, when council contacted the Courier, did the newspaper print a clarifying article. By not seeking clarification on the tree removals from council and getting the whole story, the Courier created a minor moral panic. The Courier’s first article was neither adequate in the information it provided nor accurate in what the complainant claimed.
Learn to write concisely and clearly
Learning to express our thoughts clearly, succinctly and accurately through the use of simple language is a basic skill in journalism.
Even if photography is our chosen media and we post images to Instagram or some other photographic platform we still need to write succinct, factual and concise captions to context and give meaning to our photographs. If our work is reporting on developments and news for some technical or specialised audience we have to provide information that is adequate in quality and accurate in detail. The traditional news writing format, which we visit later in this book, is a means of doing this. For those whose main means of expression is the written word there is longform (so-called because it is longer than news writing and reports in greater detail) or feature writing. This is an additional skill for the citizen journalist in the same way that video is an additional skill for stills photographers.
Conveying meaning is the purpose of language. Understanding how to use grammar such as quote marks, commas, colons, semicolons, dashes ( - ), emdashes ( —), ellipsis (…) and others makes our text easy to read and understand. So does correct spelling, though we should keep in mind that there are several correct spellings such as the different way the same word is spelled in UK, Australian and US English. All are correct because they are in common use in different countries. They are all understandable to readers of English, however editors might prefer the spelling particular to the country they publish in or where most of their readers are. When a US editor wanted to republish a story I published on my own website, he changed my Australian to US spelling and converted metric units to imperial.
We look at story structures and writing conventions later.
Stills photography
The web is visual media. Posts are more often read when they are accompanied by a photograph. Your own blog will benefit by including images with stories. Research by Kissmetrics and reported in online business magazine, Fast Company, found that 93 percent of the most engaging posts on Facebook included a photograph. Others have made similar claims about photographs attracting readers.
A photo of something we are writing about adds another layer of meaning and can supplement a textual description as well as being more likely to be read.
Learning to make stills photographs is a basic skill of citizen journalists. Our mobile phone camera might be all the camera we need. Spending time to learn the basic skills and conventions of photography will be time well-spent.
A head-and-shoulders photo of someone appearing in our of our stories does more than show the reader what an interviewee or someone quoted in the story looks like. There’s some indefinable thing about seeing someone in a photo that adds to the credibility of what they say. This is some kind of psychological phenomenon.
There are basic photography skills citizen journalists should acquire:
- the use of natural light in making a portrait and other images
- posing people for portraits
- the use of camera shutter speed
- the use of lens aperture and zone of focus
- using ISO or image speed setting
- photographic composition
- when to use the flash and how
- camera handling, especially how to securely hold a mobile phone when using it as a camera.
These basic photography skills can be picked up on YouTube, websites, books and magazines and at basic photography courses at community colleges. Online educators like CreativeLive, and Udemy offer affordable short courses in photography (watch for discounts) and Coursera offers free MOOCs (Multiple Open Online Courses) in photography and journalism.
Those publishing on websites focused solely on photography will most likely already have high-performance cameras and photo editing software. Citizen journalists do not need an expensive, high performance camera to produce images for their blogs. So long as the camera is easy to use, compact and lightweight enough to become part of the stuff they carry in their bag every day, that is all the citizen journalist needs for their blog. Those with modern smartphones already have this. The important thing is not equipment. It is photographer skill.
A basic set
The ability to write clear, factual and concise text and to make stills photos are the two skills needed to make a start as a citizen journalist. To these we can add making short videos and audio recording. They can be acquired later. Of course, we could specialise in only one of these, however mixing, say, text and stills photos makes stories more attractive and can enhance meaning in our stories.
Before spending on specialised equipment, see what your mobile phone and tablet can already do. Then experiment with different apps that offer greater capability than those that come with your phone. If you have a modern mobile phone or a tablet computer you will find these to be highly-capable devices and useful technology upon which to learn the basics of writing and photography, videography and audio recording. They are basic kit for bloggers and citizen journalists.
