{"id":652865,"date":"2013-04-17T10:09:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T14:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=227789"},"modified":"2013-04-17T10:09:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T14:09:39","slug":"how-the-public-is-reshaping-media-at-reddit-vox-and-linkedin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/652865","title":{"rendered":"How the public is reshaping media at Reddit, Vox and LinkedIn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Digital technology is transforming not just how media is made, but who is making it. At elite digital brands, readers and the general public are having an unprecedented role in shaping media and content creation.<\/p>\n

At a paidContent Live<\/a> session hosted by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, three media companies described a new breed of creators who are equally at ease with content and technology. This has led to the emergence of non-traditional media influencers such as comment communities at Reddit, and at Vox Media sites The Verge and SB Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the day, if you wanted to create media, you had to start as an intern making coffee,\u201d said Vox CEO Jim Bankoff, adding that now anyone with $100 can make a movie. He explained that this democratization of content creation has resulted, in some cases, of Vox hiring people on the basis of their comment contributions.<\/p>\n

This has led to a culture of empowerment in which everyday people are as fluent in media as many traditional journalists. More and more, they are taking to public platforms to not just report, but to take part in the news.<\/p>\n

Erik Martin, GM of Reddit, cited \u201crandom acts of pizza\u201d \u2014 a community on the site that sends pizza as a gesture of report, most recently to emergency workers in Boston.<\/p>\n

But does this new culture of public participation also has a dark side? Slate\u2019s Weisberg pointed to Reddit\u2019s current efforts to identify the Boston bomber, including posting a suspect\u2019s photo on the site, as approaching vigilante justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs Reddit about to be Richard Jewell?\u201d asked Weisberg, referring to a police officer who foiled an Atlanta Olympics bombing plot only to be falsely accused as a suspect in a traumatizing \u201ctrial by media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin said he regarded the role of Reddit employees as \u201cgroundskeepers\u201d who helped discrete communities determine their own standards.<\/p>\n

Dan Roth, a former Fortune editor who now oversees news on LinkedIn Today, offered a further example of how non-journalists are creating media. He described how executives like Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson are now writing regular columns in their own voices. While such contributions in traditional media typically amounted to no more than press releases, Roth said that readers\u2019 ire at inauthenticity has forced even corporate executives to reevaluate how they write.<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here<\/a>, and a video embed of the session follows below:<\/p>\n