[Reader-list] Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

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We the Media (hardback)
Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
By Dan Gillmor

We the Media (hardback)

Full Description
Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, 
transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept 
the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in 
real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their 
work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the 
newsmakers they cover. In We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the 
People, for the People, nationally known business and technology 
columnist Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and 
sheds light on this deep shift in how we make and consume the news.

We the Media is essential reading for all participants in the news cycle:

*    Consumers learn how they can become producers of the news. Gillmor 
lays out the tools of the grassroots journalist's trade, including 
personal Web journals (called weblogs or blogs), Internet chat groups, 
email, and cell phones. He also illustrates how, in this age of media 
consolidation and diminished reporting, to roll your own news, drawing 
from the array of sources available online and even over the phone.
*    Newsmakers politicians, business executives, celebrities get a 
wake-up call. The control that newsmakers enjoyed in the top-down world 
of Big Media is seriously undermined in the Internet Age. Gillmor shows 
newsmakers how to successfully play by the new rules and shift from 
control to engagement.
*    Journalists discover that the new grassroots journalism presents 
opportunity as well as challenge to their profession. One of the first 
mainstream journalists to have a blog, Gillmor says, "My readers know 
more than I do, and that's a good thing." In We the Media, he makes the 
case to his colleagues that, in the face of a plethora of 
Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant.

At its core, We the Media is a book about people. People like Glenn 
Reynolds, a law professor whose blog postings on the intersection of 
technology and liberty garnered him enough readers and influence that he 
became a source for professional journalists. Or Ben Chandler, whose 
upset Congressional victory was fueled by contributions that came in 
response to ads on a handful of political blogs. Or Iraqi blogger Zayed, 
whose Healing Irag blog (healingiraq.blogspot.com) scooped Big Media. Or 
acridrabbit, who inspired an online community to become investigative 
reporters and discover that the dying Kaycee Nichols sad tale was a 
hoax. Give the people tools to make the news, We the Media asserts, and 
they will.

Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the 
Big Media that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of 
journalism, and invites us all to be part of it.

Hardback Edition July 2004
ISBN: 0-596-00733-7
320 pages, $24.95 US, $36.95 CA, £17.50 UK