The form of citizen journalism that the Bylines Network introduced to the UK in 2020 is a new, co-creational approach to current affairs commentary. But what is citizen journalism, how does it relate to the wider media environment, and what is the Bylines Network doing differently?
Modern journalism
To understand what citizen journalism actually is, we first have to briefly explore how modern journalism itself came into being.
The very first news publications tended to be government missives, such as the Acta Diurna (‘Daily Acts’) that were inscribed in Latin on stone or metal plates and posted in public places in Rome. The custom of publishing these was inaugurated by Julius Caesar in 59BCE.
Modern audiences would recognise the content: political debates, criminal trials, military news, births, marriages and deaths, and ‘sports’ news (results of gladiator battles and chariot races). Posting the Acta Diurna continued until 330CE when the capital of the Empire transferred to Constantinople.
This raises an issue that still pursues us today – who is responsible for presenting the news? For the Acta Diurna, it was very obviously the state. What went into them the was what the government – the Roman Senate, in this case – wanted the people to know. So the chance of anything appearing in it that would offend the government was slim. There was no formal censorship in Rome; but, people held to be ‘moral offenders’ were subject to draconian punishment.
Paper, printing and prosecution
The chances for ordinary people to publish and distribute their ideas only became possible with the advent of cheap, readily available paper, and the ability to print multiple copies of a document. In Europe, these developments gradually spread during the 15th and 16th centuries.
The first British newspaper was The Oxford Gazette, first published in 1665, the contents of which would have been familiar topics to ancient Roman citizens: the news of the Royal Court, which was sent to London when the governing classes relocated to Oxford to escape the plague. It continued on their return as The London Gazette.
However, from the early days of the printing press, individuals wrote, published and distributed ‘pamphlets’ on specific topics, usually from the perspective of protest. Many were severely punished for what they wrote. The printers didn’t escape punishment either, with some being fined, imprisoned, beaten, or even put to death, in particular for publishing material questioning established religion.
In the early 1700s, Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe was twice convicted of libel and imprisoned for publishing pamphlets that offended the British government.
The Franklin Brothers: the dawn of liberatory journalism
James Franklin, the older brother of Benjamin Franklin, published various newspapers in the early 18th century, taking Colonial British rulers to task on several fronts, thereby fanning flames of dissent which eventually exploded into the American Revolution.
The Franklins’ newspaper, The New England Courant, supported growing arguments for the North American colonies to break free from Britain, and refused to back down when challenged by the British rulers.
When James was jailed in 1721, 15-year-old Benjamin took over as editor and continued to exert pressure, which James doubled down on when he returned. In response, the British governor passed a law to prevent James from publishing any more newspapers or pamphlets, all of which boosted subsequent protests against British rule.
In 1728, Benjamin went to Philadelphia and opened his own printing business, becoming the owner and publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette. In this role, he developed several modern journalistic practices, for example, adopting a simplified, summarised form of reporting, and funding the newspaper through advertising.
He also published essays and letters from readers, whilst carefully keeping the Gazette partisan until the revolution was imminent. In 1776, he was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Paine: speaking truth to power?
In 1995, journalist Jon Katz controversially claimed that another American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, was the creator of modern political commentary, saying “Paine [was] one of the first to use media as a powerful weapon… through his bold declarations. One of the most famous of these was ‘we have it in our power to begin the world over again’”.
Paine wrote four best-selling pamphlets which called the establishment of the late 18th century to account:
- Common Sense, which was widely claimed to have finally pulled the trigger on the American Revolution;
- Rights of Man, which defended the actions of the early French revolutionary;
- The Age of Reason, which, most controversially, questioned established Christian religions’ dominance of the common people;
- Agrarian Justice, which called for compensation for the landless.
Paine made very little money from his writing and speaking. He spent the last years of his life moving from state to state, moving on when he fell foul of the powerful, notably Prime Minister William Pitt in England and Maximilien Robespierre in France. He commented: “My country is the world.”
Perhaps Paine would have considered Bylines Network’s mission of ‘speaking truth to power’ to be a direct descendant of his campaigns. The communication technology we rely on to do this would, however, have been beyond his wildest dreams.
Instant, global news
The 16th-century Yorkshire seer Mother Shipton is credited with the prediction of modern media: “Around the world men’s thoughts will fly; Quick as the twinkling of an eye.” The technological developments of the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries have certainly borne this out. Every subsequent invention has been rapidly appropriated for news dissemination, from the telegraph to the World Wide Web.
Photography and moving film have been harnessed to provide evidence for news reporting, and since the advent of the smartphone, the vast majority of the populations of industrial and post-industrial nations carry a device in their pocket that enables them to become a reporter of instant, on-the-spot news.
As a result, the modern incarnation of citizen journalism has frequently been conducted by ordinary people who happen to be on the spot when a newsworthy event begins to unfold. The ‘Arab Spring’ of 2010 is often quoted as the first significant example of citizen journalism, but there were earlier events, such as the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001. A more recent event that saw substantial citizen coverage was the 2024 shooting of Donald Trump.
This type of reporting relies heavily on moving images, with accompanying real-time commentary. It is certainly a version of citizen journalism, but the people doing the reporting have typically not constructed themselves as citizen journalists prior to the event, and their images and commentaries are seldom edited.
This appears to be the type of citizen journalism that Elon Musk describes here.
Expertise and experience
Musk also briefly mentions the prospect of experts in various areas directly disseminating their ideas in news publications. This is something that Bylines Network already facilitates. While all our authors are unpaid volunteers, many are experts in their subject matter, while others present personal experiences which only they could write about.
In my immediate colleague group on Yorkshire Bylines, there are (for just a few examples) experienced academics, teachers and lecturers, some retired, some still in practice, an international journalist, a retired business executive with over 40 years of experience in his field, a performance artist, and a few dedicated local political activists allied to a variety of political parties.
The younger demographic is represented by several students, building their professional experience as they write, edit and manage social media interfaces as volunteers for Yorkshire Bylines.
The importance of editing
One aspect that is absent from Musk’s commentary is the role of editing and fact checking in citizen journalism.
In 2014, Adriani Zulivan concluded that citizen journalism was a waste of time because content arose from “uncoordinated individual self-interest”, meaning topics were frequently superficial, and the text was not subject to editing or monitoring. This is likely to be fair criticism of a large proportion of self-published blogging; that it is published online without being subject to evaluation by peers, most particularly with respect to accuracy.
But what Zulivan describes is light years away from the citizen journalism undertaken by the Bylines Network, where all published articles are thoroughly fact-checked and edited by a dedicated editorial team. This quality control step ensures they are of a higher quality than material disseminated through online blogs or ‘microblogging’ on social networks. It’s what makes the Bylines Network co-creational.
Director Louise Houghton says:
“We encourage our authors, all of whom are volunteers, to write about the things that energise them. New writers are welcome, and we invite contributions from those with specific areas of expertise. We also welcome contributions from those with differing views and perspectives in order to encourage debate. We aim to ensure all articles are of a high standard and contributions are subject to review by our editorial team.”
The editing process is not infallible, and sometimes errors and misrepresentations slip through. But this is less likely if several other people have a hand in checking and editing the raw text produced by one person. One of editing’s most important functions is, as children’s author Alan Alexander Milne quaintly puts it, of receiving feedback on whether “the Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it”.
Why citizen journalism?
Byline Times is our allied publication, written and edited by professional journalists who rely on subscriptions from the public to pay their wages. It is a separate entity to the Bylines Network, but shares similar foundations.
On 24 December 2024, Byline Times editor Peter Jukes explained why journalism that is not funded by mega-corporations or government collaborators is so important in today’s world. He maintains that “cosy connections and corporate comms” produce “client journalism” – news that is structured to correspond with the agendas of the powerful. Again then, we find ourselves in a situation with which the citizens of ancient Rome would be quite familiar: a catalogue of networks and ‘chumocracies’ through which the rich and powerful are able to manipulate the news.
The Byline Times approach to editorial independence is the model of journalism that spawned Bylines Network. And while we cannot rival Byline Times for professional investigative journalism, we fulfil a complementary, vital role in carrying current affairs commentary from the grassroots, from those who are not career journalists, but who can offer expertise and experience in a vast variety of areas, bringing a breadth and depth that conventional news media cannot offer.
New world, new journalism
In 2017, during his first presidency, Trump accused the press of being “the enemy of the American people”. As he reached the hundredth day of his second term, he was accused by Reporters without Borders of “unleashing a nearly endless barrage of insults against journalists and news outlets. He repeatedly threatened to weaponize the federal government against media professionals whom he considers his enemies”.
The Bylines Network carries a new type of citizen journalism, tailored to inserting the ‘grass roots’ voices of ordinary people into this rapidly changing world, in which many populist politicians have surged to power, waging war upon journalists, and visual media that can be falsified with the use of sophisticated editing apps and artificial intelligence proliferates across the internet.
Created at a time when Covid-19 and Brexit were our main topics of commentary, those of us who joined the first Bylines citizen journalism experiment in Yorkshire were not sure, at that time, whether our fledgling model would survive when ‘everything returned to normal’. But now, five years later, we know that pre-2020 ‘normal’ will never return. The 80-year post-World War II consensus has broken down, and the potential for ‘fake news’ has grown exponentially.
Nine subsequent local Bylines editions have sprung up and flourished – including two that represent the nations of Scotland and Wales. We have every reason to believe that the role that we collectively fulfil will add value to news media for the foreseeable future. If there are ordinary people out there, who are reading this whilst dreaming about becoming the 21st century equivalents of the Franklin brothers or Thomas Paine, we look forward to hearing from you.
