QotW9:The new & revamped STOMP

Citizen journalism has been around for quite sometime already, only that it existed in different forms in the past. However, with the advent of gadgets that have the abilitie to take photographs or to record videos, citizen journalism has been given a very big boost. So what exactly is citizen journalism? According to Tom Stites, citizen journalism is "a rather narrow and very privileged slice of the polity—those who are educated enough to take part in the wired conversation, who have the technical skills, and who are affluent enough to have the time and equip­ment"(Gillow, "Introduction", 2004). Unlike professional jouralism, citizen journalism is more about observations which include "some personal experi­ences . . ." (Gillow, "From Tom Paine to Blogs Beyond", 2004). So with that in mind, is the Straits Times Online Mobile Print (STOMP) a form of citizen journalism?

Personally I do not think that STOMP is an ideal form of citizen journalism for Singapore because it also contains many other sections that are done by the professionals working at the Straits Times. Examples of such sections would be "The Courtroom", "Stompcast", and "Ask ST". The only sections that seem to support citizen journalism is "'Singapore Seen" where the slogan is "You generate the content. You write the reports. You take the photos. You shoot the videos" ("Singapore Seen", 2006).

In order to make it fully about citizen journalism or a platform for an ideal form of citizen journalism, I would take out all other sections except "Singapore Seen", "STINK", "ST Foodies Club" and "ST Digital Club". This is because these are sections where normal citizens can write about their personal experiences be it in restaurants, schools or even with gadgets. However, the problem with these sections except for "Singapore Seen" is that there seems to be resident writers writing about the specific sections. For example, in the digital section, there is only one write there by the pseudonym of Spendrik. I think that this should be improved upon because this is only one person's view of the gadget. This should be a section whereby anyone who has had experience with the gadget shoule be able to tell others his or her experience of the product.

Another section that will be improved upon will be the "STINK" section. In this section, secondary school students are encouraged to share things with other students. However, if students wanted to read more articles in the section, they had to ask their teachers to subscribe for them. This makes it very inconvenient and unaccessible for the students to share things with others. What I would do would be to make the entire section free access to all students, and that they would be to share things or information while abiding certain rules.

The last thing that I would improve would be the food section. Firstly, I would keep the list of eating places so that people can always find new places to go and eat at. However, what I would improve would be that people would be able to write about their experiences either about the eating places recommended or new places. The reason why I would make these improvements is so that citizens will be able to play a bigger part in the information for others. When there many people looking at the information together, they can practice fact-checking, which is a tool whereby "when there are lots of citizen reporters scrutinizing what other people say, they have a way of getting to the truth, or at least shining light on inconsistencies" (Gillow, "Citizen Reporters to the Rescue", 2004.).

With these improvements made, I am sure that STOMP will definitely become Singapore's platform for citizen journalism, and showcase the wonderful works of citizens.


References:
Gillow, D. (2004). [On-line]. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from the World Wide Web:http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html

"Singapore Seen". (2006). [On-line]. Retrieved March 28. 2007 from the World Wide Web:http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/index.aspx