I was just thinking that with the recent scrutiny of your role as a new media consultant, your ideas would be more carefully fleshed out. I guess I’m just pointing out that your blog posts, although vaguely interesting and thought-provoking, are very random and self-indulgent (not what I’d expect from someone with your self-proclaimed important stature in journalism).

(to be frank, after years of your blogging on this subject, I would think your ideas would be a lot clearer)

That is a fascinating (and new) perspective: the solitude of the participant in news. Not sure what I think. On the one hand, I might argue that in a world of witnesses sharing news, this becomes a choice that is put to them to decide what, if anything, to share. But we’re certainly not there. On another hand, I see the point that if there are even more people sharing, there may be more cameras shoved in the faces of the participants; that is a proper fear of a world where everyone is armed with a camera. Do we ever get to the point where every witness is a potential reporter (sharer)? No, but it’s an interesting theoretical scenario.

The larger point you raise is privacy in an era when we are all public. I believe that we are all becoming more public and – in general, for many many reasons I don’t have time or space to go into right now – that is generally good. You raise a situation in which that publicness is thrust upon participants (not witnesses – except in some cases, as 9/11 when the buildings fell, all witnesses became participants).

I’m coming to no conclusions here, only extending the conversation because it is a fascinating one.

nic

This post is a critical moment. For me to hold you at this spot for a while and make sure I speak my piece while you are of the mind.

For long you’ve professed on these pages the primacy of citizen journalism, and the new worlds it will open. But I think it is only now that you appear to go to the root of the thing.

When stuff gets live, direct, personal, emotional, it is no longer in the realm of news or media. It becomes an experience shared, emotion felt – almost like realizing the Tolstoy’s definition of art. A worthy goal for all of us communicating creatures to aspire for. Why, it is as if an experience itself is being communicated, a far superior communcation compared to the knowledge and information communication that we do today…!

But there is something inherently narcissistic and intrusive about this. I wonder if the intensity of an experienced moment will ever allow the capturing and the recording of it and the communication of it without destroying the experiencing moment itself. There is a delicate solitude that the experiencing individual requires to remain as a fragile human in order to be in this experiencing moment. In fact none of can be in any other way. But – and here is my point – in my observation from watching CNN-IBN live online, most – if not all – journalists in India, who were on site when the Mumbai tragedy unfolded, were violating this solitude. People emerging out of the Taj hotel were immediately being crowded, bombarded with inane questions, cameras flashing, voices recorded, etc etc., by these journalists. Please don’t say “journalists have a job to do too…!” because any job description that violates individual space like this just doesn’t deserve a place in a civilized society.

Is this how it will always be? Is this what we want?

Regards, Crazyfinger