Driving through the Santa Cruz Mountains this morning on the way to a meeting in Santa Clara, I heard that up the peninsula in Santa Rosa the local Clearchannel Communications news station, KFTY-TV, just laid off 13 people in their newsroom and will be replacing them with “citizen journalists”:
John Burgess, TV50’s general manager and vice president, said Friday that citizen journalists will do a “much better job” of covering local issues than what the station was doing with the 13 members of the news department he let go Friday.
Burgess told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat that the changes were part of a new strategy in which viewers and users of KFTY’s Web site will determine much of the station’s programming decisions. “Literally, the mission of the station is to become a
viewer-driven station, where they are supplying content,” said Burgess…“In my opinion, we’re all looking at better ways of truly touching our customers and I think for the television industry, if you’re not engaging your viewers and Web site users in two-way interactivity, you’re not going to be growing, especially over the next three to 10 years … That as much as anything is the reason for this decision,” he said.
I think there’s a good intention in the above statement. It’s hard to argue against getting closer to the wants and needs of the community you serve. But these Mom & Apple Pie 2.0 accolades can go out the window when ‘engaging your viewers’ becomes ‘giving them the car keys.’
The question of product credibility when “anyone” is in charge is central to social media. Reading blogs to stay current in the marketing world makes sense to me because these are first person narratives by the people living these experiences. I read Roger von Oech, Christina Kerley, Valeria Maltoni, and others because they offer insights based on their personal experiences and interactions with clients. Reading political blogs is an exercise in op-ed writing, for the most part. These are outsiders providing opinions and commenting on what they perceive to be happening. They aren’t first person shooters, in these cases. Blogging from the front lines of Fallujah, on the other hand, has credibility that the MSM won’t, or can’t, provide. Again, the first person element makes this work for me.
So why am I itchy over “the news”? I think that whoever reports on local news in Santa Rosa won’t be participants but amateur observers, I guess.
Now, if there were performance problems with the people let go, financial decisions that really drove the layoffs, or if this is just a grand scheme hatched in ClearChannel’s boardroom to test a concept, we’ll cut them some slack and see what happens.
But when the “average Joe” – who is unpaid and unprofessional by definition – becomes my main source of information on issues on which he or she is only a casual observer, I lose interest. We’ll see if I’m an outlier or not when this hits the airwaves.
Stephen – I agree with you completely. Bloggers, and citizen journalists, who have a keen understanding of a topic area are the ones I choose to follow. They’re living the topic each day and are experts in their area.
If citizen journalism does work, it would have to be done using people with topical authority. I don’t want to hear about sports (or politics) from some armchair quarterback.
I could see supplementing the news with some citizen journalists viewpoints…and perhaps they do understand the topics…but to lay-off like this and package it as a better view seems transparent (transparent in a “we’re outta money” way).
This extreme a move is what I worry will hurt social media’s cred, not help.
Wow, good catch on the news! I agree with CK, supplementing the conversation through collaboration would have been more of a 2.0 move.
My take is that ClearChannel may have in fact engaged in a Corporation 1.0 move by laying off experienced and probably expensive journalists and hiring for less (the skill and credibility of citizen media creators is not my point).
I’ll start by disclosing I’m a former Clear Channel Radio employee.
The “citizen journalist” concept has promise, and this might be viewable as a bold experiment if Clear Channel didn’t happen to be in the process of divesting its television division:
Clear Channel Frosts Fidelity (Motley Fool)
Clear Channel emptied most of its local radio newsrooms years ago, and closed an entire tier of News/Talk stations at the end of last year. In preparation for their proposed transfer to a private equity company, Clear Channel engaged in an unprecedented program of staff layoffs during the 2007 budgeting process.
You’re right: we should cut the citizen journalist idea some slack. Getting a broadcaster closer to its audience is a good thing. But this particular move has the appearance of simple cost-cutting.
I would also ask the broadcasting industry this: if you are simply offering up “civilian” news coverage, what makes you special?
With the proliferation of cheap HD cameras, wireless broadband access, streaming technology, and YouTube watching, digitally savvy consumers, the bar is to entering the electronic marketplace is lowering very quickly. You no longer need a multi-million dollar transmitter plant to become a broadcaster. Create content, jack in, and off you go.
There will be a lot more of the same in the coming years, and I really don’t think the mainline industry sees it coming. Very soon, you could be driving down the street listening to Internet radio in your car. And unless the industry finds some legislative way to preserve their monopoly. anyone in slippers with a laptop will be on equal footing with the Clear Channels of the near future.
The big boys should be very careful as they plow the fields of user-generated content. They’re preparing the market for traditional broadcasting’s irrelevance.
Matt, CK, Valeria, Chris: all in violent agreement, I think?
1) This would be an interesting test to have e-CJ’s supplementing a broadcast team, even at the expense of a few F/T headcount.
2) This isn’t what’s happening – they are likely using “social media” and Time’s Person of the Year to smokescreen a layoff.
3) If this works in Santa Rosa, a lot of full time TV people in C markets are going to be looking for work across the ClearChannel world.
4) I’m a bit skeptical of this whole thing working out to be honest.
The Mom & Apple Pie takeaway on this is *differentiation*: as Chris very clearly points out, if citizen (ie, amateur) journalists can take the place of professionals, you have to wonder how good the product was in the first place.
What’s next? Letting the prisoners run the prison?
Think of the money we could save by not having to train those pesky prison guards.
I really don’t have anything insightful to say. I just want to join your amen corner. Nice post, once again.