The participatory journalism juggernaut--or merely itch

There's a smart and sensitive piece today at New West by Leon Sterling about what he calls "e-feelings." He's talking about the urge to communicate through blogs, through e-mail, through participatory journalism (which is exactly what his post is on the New West site). And he worries: "Today, our beliefs are like fireflies – they shine for a few brief moments, but then they disappear, and no one knows where they went."

But what is crucial about the fireflying of feelings is that they do indeed add to the great inventory of anecdotal thought that can supplement static content. The brave promise of this new content source is that it does (at least) three things: first, it levels the opportunity to publish; second, it adds a multitude of voices and perspectives; third, it brings precisely this evanescence, this sense of fleeting thought and all of its freshness to readers. And a fourth thing that is inevitable: it will turn readers into writers.

Not all of that writing will be good, decent, well observed. Some it may even be dishonest. But in the broadest perspective of the tectonic shift now just beginning to alter the publishing landscape, the wave of new voices will be electrifying. There is not enough of it yet.

Leon Sterling is concerned that this content will disappear too easily unless archiving is stepped up. Yet I wonder. Certainly in the case of citizen journalism that is integrated as a content source into established online publications, this content should be archived with all the other articles--assuming that copyright is cleared before publication. And then there is the other direction for this content--forward-thinking editors will begin to find sensible and clever ways to port this content over to their print publications. The best of these evanescent thoughts will have more than evanescent lives.