We Are the Means

The Power Media lost their monopoly on news thanks to the internet. Now that real-time news publishing can reach a global audience, a new breed of grassroots journalist is taking the news into their own hands. Equipped with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras, these ex-readers-turned-journalists transform news reporting from lecture to dialogue. In We Are the Media, journalist and blogger Dan Gillmor tells the story of this ongoing phenomenon and sheds a lot of light on the change taking place in how we produce – and consume – news. Gillmor shows us how each of us can now participate in the production of news using our personal online newspaper (known as a weblog or blog), online chat rooms, and e-mail. It sounds the alarm bells for the traditional creators of the news – politicians, business executives, celebrities –, the barons of the market, and the public relations managers who promote them. He explains how one can successfully play the game of this new era and turn 'control' into 'collusion'. And he reminds his fellow journalists that, faced with this abundance of information coming from the network, they should adapt to the new data because otherwise they risk being left out of the competition. Basically, We Are the Means is a book about people. People like law professor Glenn Reynolds, whose blog posts and commentary on technology and freedom gained so much readership and influence that he became a source of information for professional journalists. Or Joe Trippi, who managed to run Howard Dean almost to the presidency of America, using internet-based grassroots politics. Or the Iranian blogger Zayed, who with his blog "Healing Iraq", took the bite out of the traditional media's mouth for many news related to the war. Or "acridrabbit", who managed to create an online community of investigative journalists, which revealed that the sad story of Kaycee Nichols dying was a hoax. Give the people the tools to create the news, and they will create it. The journalism of the 21st century will be completely different from today's, where the Powerful Media prevail. We Are the Medium sheds light on the future of journalism and invites us all to take part. Dan Gillmor is a columnist, best known in America for his newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News. He writes for several other American newspapers and is also responsible for the SiliconValley.com blog, the Mercury News website. Gillmor has been listed several times as the most influential journalist and has won or shared journalism awards several times. We Are the Mean is his first book.