Kingdom Journalism Training … from CNN?
- Posted by Steve K. on March 12th, 2008 filed in Photography, Writing, Video, Internet
Last month, CNN launched a beta site for their iReport program, which engages “citizen journalists” in providing stories, photos, and video to the cable news network. The tagline is “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.”, and that pretty much describes the iReport website—a holding tank for information that has not yet been vetted by the professionals in the CNN newsroom.
The iReport homepage boasts “89,944 iReports worldwide. 915 on CNN last month.” I’m not a math genius, but even I can see that there’s only a small percentage of iReports that actually make it on TV. That’s not really the point. The point is that the role of major news organizations like CNN (and, likewise, communication professionals in mission agencies like SIM) is changing. Our job is not to try and report on all the stories that are out there (because that’s impossible), but rather to find the stories that are already being told by the people (the “citizens”) on the ground and closest to the story themselves, vet them, and promote them to a broader audience.
As the iReport blog explained on day one, “We know the news universe is changing. We know that even here, at CNN, we can’t be everywhere, all the time following all the stories you care about.” That sounds very much like the pep talk I give new SIM missionaries when I speak to them about communication and mission. The onus is on everyone to be a communicator and to “describe God’s mighty deeds” around the world (Acts 2:11).
Fortunately, we have folks like CNN who get this and are offering new tools to facilitate what I’ve dubbed “kingdom journalism.” The iReport website offers a great toolkit with helpful tutorials on:
I think I’ll be adding these links to my list of resources as part of the communication training we share with SIM missionaries. Thanks, CNN!
March 15th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
The iReport thing is a great idea. I’m glad that they are rolling out a method to easily do it. The only problem, when you upload anything, you give them FULL rights to use it in any way, including selling it. It’s a bummer, but ONE HUGE note of caution to take heed of.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:22 am
That’s a good comment that I want to follow-up on. I’m not necessarily advocating that people join CNN’s iReport program. I simply wanted to point out that they have some good materials that are applicable to the work that we’re doing in the missions world. So let’s learn from them, but don’t think you need to join the CNN program to do that