ye —$$____—_ — Citizen Journalism ' The news media today is in one of the most significant periods of change in its history. Change is not new to the news. The telegraph in the 1840s, cheap paper and huge numbers of immigrants in the 1880s, the radio in the 1920s, and television in the 1950s all transformed news reporting. However, the biggest change has taken place in digital media. In digital media, well-trained journalists with a lot of experience are not the only people reporting the news. Free, convenient technology means that almost anyone with a computer or smart phone can re2ort news online. These people are known as citizen journalists, or bloggers. 2 __ Before citizen journalism, experienced journalists controlled the news. They researched a story, wrote an article, and showed it to their editor: The editors decided whether the story was worthwhile. If they decided it s not very interesting, they rejected it. If they thought it was interesting, they would check the story and make sure it was well written, Then the story appeared in a newspaper or on television. Journalists expected the public to believe the story and not to question it. In most cases, reporters and editors decided what news to publish and what news to ignore. » Today, traditional journalists no longer have this control over the news. Citizen journalists have the same technology as traditional reporters and can easily publish news. This news can reach millions of people through the Internet on websites and blogs ~ another name for online journals. Millions of people have created their own blogs and use them to write about many things, including the news. They invite readers to answer them by adding, or posting, comments to the blog, Ore amazing thing about blog postings is their speed. Bloggers often post news beiore the traditional media report it. For instance, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, bloggers posted video and text of the devastation before many of the major news organizations. Blogs can also provide very specific and personal information that is not available from traditional news media. After the tsunami in Southeast Asia, bloggers were the first to tell the world what was happening. Blogs were able to provide information to friends and families who were waiting for news of survivors of the disaster. 4 One large online news site is the South Korean OhmyNews website. This website, which was founded in 2000 by Oh Yeon-ho, publishes hundreds of stories every day. Millions of readers visit this site. In 2003, 25,000 citizen journalists were writing stories for OhmyNews. Four years later, more than 40,000 were reporting. These citizen journalists are not professional journalists; they are office workers, salespeople, farmers, and doctors. As Oh Yeon-ho explains, “With OhmyNews, we wanted to say goodbye to twentieth-century journalism. ... Our main concept is every citizen can be a reporter” ® _ Sometimes traditional media also depend on citizen journalists. In November 2008, a group of gunmen attacked the Indian city of Mumbai.attacked several buildings, luding a police station, restau hospital, and a well-known potel, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, The gunfight lasted for hours, and over 150 people were killed. Traditional news media found it difficult to report on the fast-moving events, However, within minutes, citizen journalists from all over the city reporting using online ser such as Twitter and YouTube. People uploaded photos ind even transmitted video from inside the burning Taj Hotel. News networks including CNN used these pictures and information in their broadcasts. At one point, citizen journalists were posting seven messages every five seconds on ‘Twitter. One of these jour- nalists was Arun Shanbhag, who was near the hotel when it was attacked. He described what was happening and uploaded many photos. “I felt [had a responsibility to share my views with outside world,” he later explained. These examples show the power of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is powerful, but it also has problems. One problem is accuracy. Anyone can post a story, so how do readers know what is true? For example, in 2008, someone posted on CNN iReport that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, had suffered a heart attack. This was not true, but it resulted in the company quickly losing 10 percent of its value, After just 20 ‘minutes, CNN deleted the post. Another issue is what kind of information citizen journalists should publish. For example, traditional media decided not to broadcast videos of the execution of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein; however, someone posted a video of his death on the Internet just minutes after the execution, Five years later, whea Muammar Gaddafi, the former leader of Libya, was killed, traditional media decided they would post videos of his death. They believed they had to do this because blog: fers would post these videos anyway, It is clear that traditional media ne Tonger have absolute control of the news. ‘Online nevis sites have also forced the traditional media to change the way they do business. Traditional media make money mainly through dvertising, However, since more people get their news online, fewer people are buying newspapers or watching the news. Advertisers have therefore begun to buy more online advertising and spend less on adver~ tising in traditional media. This has caused the traditional news media to ose money. One solution has been to move to the Internet. Most large ews organizations now have websites. For example, CNN has a vety shecessfal website with an audience of more than 20 million people per jnonth, The growth in digital media and citizen journalism has resulted in nany changes in the business and reporting of the news The Taj Maha P and Tower Hote! Whi paragraph 5? Highligh READING 3. @ 27What a 20-year-old experiment can teach anxious parents about home schooling Leaming isn't only about textbooks; it’s about awakening in the pupil the desire to grapple with Jnleresting challenges Sarah Stein Lubrano 4 August, 2020 For perhaps the fist ime in the history of modern ‘education, milions of primary and secondary students may begin the school year from home. Wile pupils in England are due to retum to in-person learning in September, uncertainty remains as Covid-19 cases risa, lal lockdowns are implemented and the scientiic community ‘ams thatthe goverment’ test and trace ‘systems not up tothe job of containing potential spikes caused by the return of schools. Some parents may choose not to sond their hire back for thoi family's safoly. School leaders and teachors willbe righty ‘concemed about kids who have fallen behind. Paronts and carers will bo fooling anxious about the need, once again, to juggle work and home schooling The latter may also worry they are poorly ‘equipped to support ther children because they ‘cannot remember topics such as long division. While there is ite they cen do as they wat for news of te months ahead, an experiment cariod ‘ut by an t8th-contury French schoolmaster, Jan-Joseph Jacotot, may soote some oftheir anxieties about home schooling and their lack of knowiedge ofthe schoo! curriculum. Jacotot found himself assigned to teachin Belglum. The chidren in his charge spoke only Flemish and he only French. Undeterred, he gave his students a novel written in his mother tongue, Les Aventures de Télémaque, and a French dictionary, and encouraged them to take on the {ask of teaching themselves, Remarkably it worked, The students enjoyed solving the ‘puzze" for themselves: “The inteligence that nad allowed them to leam the French in Télémaque was the same they had used to lear their mother tongue: by observing and retaining, repeating and vertying, by relating ‘hal they were trying to knovr fo what they ‘already knew, by doing and reflecting about what they had done.” 6 Learning often has nothing to do with someone Colder or better read pouring the right information into the leamer's mind. (Consider how often children and even adults leamn from tial and. error, from learning to ride a bike to using a new technology.) Instead, learning has to do with ‘awakening in the student the desire to grapple ‘with interesting challenges. Ithas more to do with asking a child difficult questions at the inner table, with encouraging one’s children {0 construct treehouses or fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes, and less to do with filing in the blanks of workbooks. 7 Jacotot went on to teach other topics he knew nothing about, like painting and the piano, using his new style of teaching called “universal ‘education’. It was founded on the idea that “all ‘men have equal inteligence” and that “all human beings are equally capable of learning’. twas radical in ts time, when only the sons of relatively, privileged men recelved a formal education, and itis still radical now. 8 The challenges facing Jacolot were similar to those facing our education system today: unequal ‘access to education and parents who knov tle about the topics thelr children are supposed to be leaming. Jacolot’s work was in part meant {0 demonstrate that the later problem was also ‘an opportunity to rethink how underprivileged children might leam, Parents (vo in Jacalot's time were often literate) could teach not by knowing but by encouraging and asking ‘questions. If education is relmagined as students ‘combining freedom and the right resources to explore ideas for themselves, then a surprisingly ‘wide array of people can “teach” — including carers during a pandemic 9 We should worry less about the number of hours that children spend on Zoom and more about their access to resources, from books {o technology, that they can use to explore the world around them from the safety of their own homes. At present, poorer students appear to be ‘aling behing during viral leaming, in large part because of a lack of access to the right devices and the intemet. 410 This does not, of course, mean that there is nothing to worry about when it comes to virtual Jeaming. Studying from home stil means missing cout on a great deal of emational and soctal Jearing that is crucial during childhood. Some students with special neads also do worse. A turn"1 to home learning should not mean that teaching is simply left to carers altogether; teachers! knowledge of the curriculum end expertise in the classroom is invaluable, and students need a greater variety of experiences, structure and resources than perents alone can provide. But as history and philosophy can demonstrate, \eaming does not only happen in a classroom and it does not always require an expert to supervise it. Jacotot’s discovery is thet human beings are learning beings: they know hardly anything at birth but seek out and develop incredible capacities. It should make us less worried about children during this difficult ime ‘and even more hopeful about ourselves. ‘© Guarten News anc Mega 2020 Fist pubished in The Quardian, 0408120