With new technology comes a new media brand: the Citizen Journalist

THE woman told what happened: arrests in London. Second, who it happened to: suspects from the previous week’s abortive bombing.

Thirdly, when it happened - ten minutes before the broadcast. Fourthly, how it happened: armed police ordering the suspects to strip and come out with their hands up, the suspects calling back that they were scared they’d be shot by the cops as they emerged without protection.

Drama and detail.

The definition of professional news reporting.

Except the reporter was an amateur, who happened to be on the spot when the guys came down from the balcony into police custody.

The excellence of her reportage underlines just how effective a trainer TV can be.

TV brainwashes children into repeating advertising slogans and habituates adults to the order and sequence of news reporting so that, should they be close to a news event, they can deliver what’s now being called Citizen Journalism.

Early journalism was the preserve of those who had the leisure to go to wars and other events as observers, and the literacy to put words on telegraph wires in an economical order.

Journalists further ‘branded’ their profession by developing a uniform. In black and white movies, the journalist was instantly recognisable as the guy (always) in the Fedora and trenchcoat: upturned collar, pencil behind ear, cigarette stuck to lower lip, stenographer’s pad ready for flipping, demeanour equal parts lazy cynicism and excited scoop-pursuit.

Technology further differentiated journalists from the rest. The only profession allowing men to use typewriters without shame was journalism.

Then it was microphones, with America’s Ed Murrow taking the revolutionary step, during a live broadcast, of sticking his mike out into the street to pick up the sounds of London during the Blitz: the first time ambient noise became part of the story, giving a ‘feel’ of the experience.

The technology didn’t have to be terribly efficient. What differentiated journalists from the ordinary citizen was the hacks’ ability to use the technology.

For example, when the end of Nassau Street in Dublin blew up in front of me one Friday thirty years back, I went to Abbey Street, to the offices of the newspaper then employing me, told the news editor what I’d seen, then typed it out. As I typed, a copy boy tore off one sheet after another to bring to the type-setter. None of the other witnesses in Nassau Street could do that. High-tech, it wasn’t. Exclusive to the professional, it was.

Today, within 30 seconds of such an explosion, witnesses would be on their mobile phones to radio programmes doing Citizen Journalism.

Most of them would know the phone or text number of their favourite radio station.

Those who didn’t know the numbers could still be through to the studios, delayed less than a minute by a number-getting call to 11850 or 11811.

Trained by listening/viewing from birth, they would deliver confidently and within the specifications of radio reporting. And it’s worth emphasising the “confidently.”

The only people who, these days occasionally gulp and apologise for nerves are older, usually female callers to programmes such as Joe Duffy’s Lifeline. For younger callers, radio is simply an extension of their phoning arm.

Educationalists worry that texting reduces the language to a phonetic shorthand which impoverishes the thought it expresses: “2B R nt 2B, tht is the?” doesn’t have quite the resonance of the original.

Arguably of more significance, however, is the cognitive sharpening texting develops. It’s done on the run, between people who have a wealth of other inputs, to attract and keep the attention of the fickle.

It has trained a generation to cut to the chase, get to the point, remove the waffle. (It has not trained them to remove clichés like ‘cut to the chase’ because - God love us - just as each emergent generation believes it invented sex, so each emergent generation believes its clichés to be new-minted gems.) The self-editing immediacy of skilled texters has significantly, albeit subtly, changed the shape of current affairs radio programmes.

Whereas texted listener comment used to happen in clustered, essentially responsive segments of such programmes, it now gets actively incorporated into the questioning of those interviewed, noticeably enriching the content.

The incentive for the Citizen Journalist varies. In current affairs programming, there’s the satisfaction of raising angles which might otherwise be missed or contradicting claims, like National Toll Roads’ announcements that addition of Easy Pass lanes had speeded M50 traffic.

In entertainment/music programming, there’s the kick of amateur scriptwriting. Last week, this newspaper’s columnist Sean Moncrieff, presenting an afternoon programme, had the technology go spectacularly out from under him. One minute he was on the air, the next, he wasn’t.

Moncrieff had the wit to turn the disaster into carnival rather than car crash, and in no time was getting scripted inputs on text like “Why is your programme like a Great Dane? Because you both have long paws.”

Perhaps the definitive example of Citizen Journalism where, by accident, a citizen witnesses, records and sells data from a major happening was the Zapruder film. Abraham Zapruder brought his 8mm camera to Dealy Plaza the day President Kennedy was assassinated, recording just over twenty-six seconds of silent footage.

That footage proved the limitations of eye-witness testimony: many of those present believed the motorcade slowed to a stop, whereas Zapruder’s footage showed the contrary.

It made Zapruder famous and his descendants rich, when the US National Archives bought the tiny scrap of film for millions.

Today, Zapruder’s successors clutch mobile phone that can record and instantly transmit sound, still pictures and moving footage.

So it’s safe to predict the next general election will be the Citizen Journalist’s election. Media outlets will have an unprecedented unpaid resource available to them - with all the inherent drawbacks of such a resource. Political parties, likewise.

Don’t ask me to bet that Sinn Féin, alone, already have the strategy, research and training to exploit the political possibilities of Citizen Journalism.

I don’t bet on certainties.