From Ron Miller (via Renee Blodgett):
When I was in Montreal over Memorial Day Weekend, I found a book called Rolling Stone Reader in a used bookstore on Rue St. Dennis. The book has a 1974 copyright.
One story that caught my eye immediately was called An Experiment in Participatory Journalism by Cindy Ehrlich and David Felton. The authors invited just plain folks to send in their autobiographies and they published as many of them as they could, which it turned out was only 17 of more than 1000 that were submitted. In the author's words:
"We though they might have some good stories to tell from their personal lives, stories normally bypassed by the practices of conventional, event-oriented journalism."
I thought it was fascinating that Rolling Stone had innovated with participatory journalism so early, and I would venture to guess it is probably one of the earliest uses of the term.
In comments to Renee's post, Ron follows up further. (And I agree with his meaning of participatory journalism too):
Citizen Journalism or Participatory Journalism (or whatever you want to call it) is when citizens (regular folks, not professional journalists), tell their stories, and this is exactly what the editors of the Rolling Stone story were trying to do in this piece.
They had regular people submit their stories, whatever they were, so they could tell them through a news/magazine channel, an idea that was certainly revolutionary at the time. Some are little anectodotes, some poems, some a short life story, but it is certainly in line with how we are defining the term today.
Unfortunately, Rolling Stone does not have an archive of stories this old on their Web site (although I was told after phoning them that they are working on it), so it is not possible to link the story so you could see for yourself rather than relying on my intepretation.
BONUS: Ron Miller's EContent magazine article, "Journalism Returns to its (Grass) Roots", June 2005. He explains: "Community Journalism provides an outlet for regular folks to share information about their lives, information that most local publications don't cover any more as large media entitites buy local media and produce homogenized material, often far removed from the community."
AND: This ties in with what I wrote earlier this week on my regular blog: Saved From Freezing.
NPR has done some projects a bit like this. The National Story Project
http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/features/1999/991002.storyproject.html
And some parts of Lost & Found Sound
http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/
Also, Storycorps
http://storycorps.net
Posted by: Steve Rhodes | August 03, 2005 at 04:03 AM
Mine was among the 10 autobiographical submissions to the 1970 Rolling Stone "Experiment in Participitory Journalism" which were selected from the entries. In 1977 Rolling Stone Magazine presented a 10th Anniversary TV Special via CBS in November of that year- in which my 1970 autobio about my service, and moreso my return from Vietnam was portrayed in monolog by Martin Sheen, with intro by Sissy Spacek. I was flown to L.A. for 3 days where I worked with Sheen in re-writing my Vietnam war autobio for monolog-TV format. To my own chagrin I am unable to recall the title of my story and have never been able to locate a copy or back-issue ( 1970 ) of the Rolling Stone Magazine that contained my Vietnam story. If anyone might know how I might locate that copy or back-issue it would surely be appreciated! If any help- a photo of myself ( in wheelchair ) and playing flute with a band I was in at the time was actually the cover of that "participitory journalism" issue. One remarkable ( if not now humorously predictable )memory attached was that one of the other 9 autobio's chosen along with my own had to do with a then timely and emblematic "hippie" commune wherein its collective members enjoyed warm bowls of the stewed placenta which accompanied the birth of a most recent communal love-child. Ahhh ( shudder ) those summers of love!
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