Indo Asian News Service
Prasun Sonwalkar
The larger story was between the lines, but not many noticed it. In July, rains wreaked havoc in parts of Mumbai while London was rocked by a series of explosions on the underground. More recently, Bali was again rocked by blasts while hurricanes hit the US. The events caused widespread death and destruction and spawned reams of newspaper coverage and hours of live television coverage.
But except for a few news addicts on the Internet, not many noticed the real story - the increasing participation of citizens in the news production process. In more ways than one, the events amounted to a `tipping point` for the Indian and British media.
News coverage has traditionally had a top-down dynamic - a few inDIViduals deciding which event or issue to cover and how to cover it. These inDIViduals - journalists - were at one end of the communication process, providing their version of reality to the large audience of citizens. More often than not, citizens have been passive recipients of editorial fare and could not really do much if they disagreed with the kind of journalism they were provided.
But the World Wide Web changed that equation. It enabled anyone and everyone to become a journalist and publish different versions of the same event. The traditional media slowly started losing their monopoly over news in the 1980s as news websites mushroomed, many of them started by inDIViduals with no overt links with mainstream media companies.
Sep 11, 2001, was marked not only by the audacity of the act but also by the way it was reported online, more extensively and faster than the traditional media. Less than 10 minutes after the first passenger plane struck the World Trade Center, eyewitness accounts by citizens - weblogs - began to appear on the web. They were then followed by major news sites and, as the day unfolded, hundreds of websites emerged with what was called `personal journalism`.
Research on the coverage of 9/11 shows that the contrast between citizen-produced coverage and mainstream reporting was stark. The sheer range of information and views available online made the web a far richer source of news than the traditional media.
Things have evidently gone further since the reporting of 9/11. When bombs exploded at various locations in London on 7/7, far more information - including visuals - was available online than on television, radio or press.
Most television footage of the day was provided by citizens who emailed the clips to BBC and other channels. Such was the quality of weblogs put out by citizens that for the first time in Britain a consensus has emerged that `citizen participation` is going to change traditional news journalism for good.
No one is yet quite sure how this will come about, but there are several examples of a new breed of news websites, vastly different from one another, but common in aim: to combine the democracy of blogging with the established virtues of traditional news journalism - accountability and factual accuracy.
Experts in Britain and the US are no longer sure if the major news providers will survive these trends. Many wonder if news giants such as Fox and CNN will still be around after 20 years.
Things are not quite the same in India, but it has long been a media-rich poor country, with a vibrant and DIVerse press - television is a relatively recent phenomenon, where professional journalistic standards are yet to stabilise. Internet density there is among the lowest in the world, but a large number of news websites are active, and not all have been set up by traditional media groups.
Blogging is yet to reach Western levels, but it was during the crippling rains in Mumbai that for the first time in India citizen journalism came into its own.Some websites published several eyewitness accounts of the rains while at least one news website proved to be a crucial link for some rescue acts. The source of news on the rains was no longer the radio, television or the press.
Movement of television crews was hampered by waterlogged streets, and only those citizens who were stranded in their homes and who had video cameras at hand could record the devastation. Such footage was subsequently aired extensively on television news channels, marking a first for Indian news journalism.
The traditional news outlets cannot hope to dismiss these trends; they must start thinking of strategies to cope with this monumental change that will hit them before they know it.
(Prasun Sonwalkar is a UK-based academic and journalist. He can be reached at sprasun@yahoo.co.uk).