Book Review: "We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By The People, For The People"

I am going to have to confess to something here. Before I started reading "We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By The People, For The People",(299 pages , O'Reilly Media, 2002, ISBN 0-596-00733-7) written by Dan Gillmor, I had my mind all set up that it would be some more rubbish spit out by a hack journalist. This was easy for me to do because I never considered myself to be a journalist and I knew virtually nothing about Dan Gillmor. The latter is because I have probably had my head buried too deep into purely technical books more than I should. I also have been undecided on the role of "new media" in society as a whole because of my disdain for the latest and greatest toys pushed out by manufacturers. Then I sat down and read this book. I was instantly drawn in, not only because I had started my own blog in July, but because the book challenged me to think about the role of bloggers in society. I do not agree with everything Mr. Gillmor has written, but like movies like "The Passion of the Christ", a truly good book is one that challenges your notions, makes you think about them, and offers you the chance to enter into conversation about them.
 
If you choose to read this book, don't expect a how to guide on how to build and publicize a blog. Expect to gain an understanding how, in Mr. Gillmor's view, the blog boom is a natural extension of how journalism has changed over the years. I disagree with him that we as bloggers are journalists because I define it differently. In fact, I believe that between the lines of this book, a reader will see that they are not truly journalists in the strictest sense, BUT, because blogs are essentially journals that we write and publish, what we write can take on a life of its own. Even though we do not have copy editors reviewing our work, blog postings can and do take on a life of their own, sometimes with damaging results. For me, this is key in Mr. Gillmor's presentation.

Mr. Gillmor discusses the evolution of Mickey Mouse (tm) impact of copyright law in the United States. If you can read this section of the book and not come away with even a smidgen of disgust for the tactics and hypocrisy of the corporate world in preventing works from truly entering the public domain as originally envisioned, then you will need to go back and reread the book. Here is where I diverge from his point of view again. Mt. Gillmor talks extensively of his view of Free Speech as being an inherent right on the Internet in all forms, with courts and laws stifling free speech with every chance they get. This IS something I did expect from a book written by a journalist. For me, we have no right to impose our values on other sovereign nations and that in our own nation, irresponsible free speech on the Internet needs to be policed. Yes I know this is a slippery slope, but his book provides a catalyst for conversation.

For business large and small, this book needs to be read to understand that a blog is not a toy of the fringe. It is a tool that is increasingly used to keep journalists and corporations/companies in line and the bull meter low (see this web site for an example that I was involved in shortly after the launch of my blog). This same audience needs to read this book to understand how not using this medium themselves is a mistake, giving examples of how companies use and regulate it. There are business control and corporate governance issues that need to be addressed with this new medium. Without a fundamental understanding of the medium, the risks associated with it cannot begin to be assessed.

For students of journalism and new media, this book should be required reading. Mr. Gillmor points out that the field of journalism is often slow to react to change. They no longer can be and this understanding needs to start in the journalism schools and new media institutes (I will make sure that Dr. Scott Shamp at the University of Georgia's New Media Institute gets ahold of this manuscript).

For bloggers of all kinds, whether they consider themselves to be journalists or not, need to read this book. They need to read and understand its context. They need to understand what their impact is. I also feel that they need to recognize their societal obligations in their writings, which I do wish Mr. Gillmor had addressed more in the book.

Over 20 years ago, I sat in a senior Political Science seminar at Niagara University called "Women and Politics" taught by Dr. Nancy McGlen. In her book, "Women's rights: The struggle for equality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries", she wrote about the presence of a critical mobilizing event being required for a social movement to truly take hold. Mr. Gillmor begins his book about the new media with virtually the same thesis. Whether the event he cites is the event is correct or not, its fits her model, I feel this book is the medium for serious discussions of the role of new media in society and in itself should be considered a critical mobilizing event.

I am not writing this to sell you a book. You see, Mr. Gillmor totally won me over when I got to the punchline of the book: It would be nice if you bought it, but you do not have to. It is available free for download from the "We The Media" blog and under Creative Commons licensing, you are allowed to make derivative works. And true to his beliefs, Mr. Gillmor and the publisher have agreed that the copyright on the book, in the spirit of the original copyright laws, will expire after 14 years.

I have already finished 95% of a derivative work: a searchable Lotus Notes database version of the book that I plan to give to a colleague at the Atlanta Journal Constitution and any other Lotus Notes users that want to read it in this format. I think that after reading the electronic versions, you WILL want a hard copy for your library.

Related Reviews from Colleagues:

Ed Brill's Four-Part Review
Tom "Duffbert" Duff

"We the Media" as a Lotus Notes Database (Available through the generosity of Bruce Elgort and the openNTF community)