Social Journalism

Social journalism is a media model consisting of a hybrid of professional journalism, contributor and reader content. It is similar to open publishing platforms, like Twitter and WordPress.com, except that some or most content is also created and/or screened by professional journalists. Examples include Forbes.com, Medium, BuzzFeed,and Gawker. The model, which in some instances has generated monthly audiences in the tens of millions, has been discussed as one way for professional journalism to thrive despite a marked decline in the audience for traditional journalism.

Writing in Re/code, Jonathan Glick, CEO of Sulia, said the model of publishers as platforms (which he calls a "platisher") is "on the rise". Glick cites as examples Medium (from Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone), Vox Media, Sulia, Skift, First Look Media (backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar) and BuzzFeed. On March 12, 2014, Mark Little, the CEO of Storyful.com, now a division of News Corp., proposed "10 Principles that Power Social Journalism," including "UGC [User Generated Content] is governed by the same legal and ethical code as any other content" and "The currency of social journalism is authenticity not authority. We are not experts in every subject."

In an interview in The New York Times, the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said the Guardian was in the process of converting into a platform as well as a publisher. "For years, news organizations had a quasi monopoly on information simply because we had the means of distribution. I think if as a journalist you are not intensely curious about what has been created by people who are not journalists, then you’re missing out on a lot," he said.

Social journalism has been attacked by media critic Michael Wolff in USA Today as the "Forbes vanity model letting ‘contributors’ write whatever they want under your brand (‘as I wrote in Forbes …’) and not having to pay them anything — ultimately, of course, devaluing your authority."

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Wikipedia