Citizen journalism, sport and the future of human life

I was invited to an event hosted by scoop the Israeli citizen journalism site. The event marks the one year anniversary of the site and brought together about 100 of their writers and several speakers to discuss the phenomenon of citizen journalism the achievements of the site and its future.

A have several observations from the event, first is that people do have the power to effect change. You don’t need to go through a long investigative process to do good in this world. It is enough to shed light on a small problem and get it fixed to create a better society for all of as. This is the true power of people on the internet. We don’t need to try and solve world hunger or create a utopian society just use this media to constantly make small improvements in peoples life’s. Highlight the good and criticize the bad, encourage a public debate and make people/ companies/ and the public sector accountable for their actions.

This reminds me of the opening ceremony to the Atlanta Olympic Games. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing seat on the 8 row (just behind Demy Moore and Bruce Willis, I will elaborate on that experience in a separate post) and got a very close view of the way the very elaborate show was conducted. The whole process was broken down into very simple tasks which many volunteer dancers and children could follow. But put tougher the effect was magnificent. I view citizen journalism in a similar way make it simple for many people to take one small step and together create a magnificent show that remains in peoples minds for many years to follow.

Another observation from Scoop’s event was the power of the comments. Time and time again the writers talked about the importance of the comments to their articles and how personally they take the negative feedback. As Sportingo deals with the very emotional world of sport some of the comments get to be very negative, I hope that our contributors are not deterred by these type of comments. My favorite example is the articles by Orion Assante, he seems to get a very strong reaction from fans who end up accusing him of being a supporter of there opposing team. I do not know which team Orion supports but based on the comments on the site he has to be supporting Manchester United, Everton, Chelsea and possibly Manchester City a very unlikely situation.