We need to deploy ‘Acts of Journalism’

The idea of ‘citizen journalism’ was always going to be short-lived.

It did its job to articulate that after generations of highly professionalized news-gathering we needed help. Now both professional and amateur journalists need a new understanding of the work we do.

I’ve been using a somewhat clunky and certainly pretentious-sounding phrase for some time now: producing “acts of journalism” to refer to the many outcomes that lead to honest dialogue about an idea and concept.

This could be data visualization and panel discussions and, yes, article writing, with a feature lead and a nut graf. So I was quite tickled to see Josh Stearns use this phase as the title of an important report he published for the Free Press Institute this fall [PDF].

As the Harvard Nieman Lab went on to point out: the report raises the crucial question of how Shied Laws should protect such acts.

This is a healthy reframing of journalism practitioners, and others who take on the work when relevant to their passions and interests.

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