thecyberbrains.com

Just a quick note today because I'm still in dissertation hell. I've got a mountain of data that needs to be cross tab and checked for covariance. But I just wanted to feature this article about the new direction Ohio University, the place I'm going to be working, is taking.

Ok, fine! It's about me! I think it turned out well. I was nervous during the interview, and I'm surprised my quotes make sense.

Found this gem in my e-mail today:

Hans K. Meyer,
Your account, 'Hansron', has been banned by the system administrators.

Ban: Disable Login
Expires: Never

That's it. There was no explanation. I'm just banned from iReport.com. I guess I can't be a citizen journalist anymore. Does this mean I can't research it anymore either? If so, I'm in trouble. Better start looking for a new line of work.

I'm joking, of course. I honestly could care less. I don't have any horrifying disaster stories or remembrances of recently departed celebrities (unless Bob from Sesame Street passes, which we all hope and pray does NOT happen any time soon.) The only reason I bring it up here is it adds fuel to my fire about why the legacy media, such as CNN just don't get citizen journalism. If you have such Draconian administrative policies that someone gets banned without explanation, then do you seriously think people are going to want to share their stories with you?

I had better relate my history with iReport first to be fair. I enjoy the site. In many ways, I think it can be a model citizen journalism community. CNN seems to be one of the few organizations to actually do something more with the contributions they receive than publish them. The network used to have a show that featured exclusively iReports. Here and there, CNN news shows also include iReports.

I based much of my dissertation experiment off the good work iReport has done, and I thought what better place to look for participants than the site itself. I skimmed through the user agreement and didn't see anything that forbid it. I thought I'd give it a try.

Well, less than an hour after I posted my little spiel in the "Save Newspapers!" topic, I got an e-mail saying my post violated the user agreement and was being removed. It claimed my post was trying to recruit participants to a CNN competitor and that I was impersonating CNN employees. I thought the reasons were pretty silly, but I wasn't surprised my post was removed. Honestly, I just hoped it would be on the site long enough to catch a few dozen people. I'm not sure how many participants I received from it. (Incidentally, the best places to recruit participants by far has been the two alumni networks I belong to on LinkedIn. Thanks Mizzou and BYU grads!!)

I also fired off an e-mail to the moderator who removed my post, not arguing with the decision, but simply explaining what I was trying to do. It wasn't rude in any way. That was two weeks ago.

So today, I get banned, and I don't know why. I can only assume it has something to do with my nefarious post, but I wish CNN would tell me. I can only wonder what it's like to work with the site when you are actually contributing what you think is journalism.

Look, if you really care about your audience and you really want to accept their contributions, then you either have to 1) accept them all, even the occasional piece of spam, or you have to 2) at least work with them to make sure their posts fit.

CNN, I had high hopes for you. I really did, but you are just proving to me that even as much as you say you want to hear from us, you only care about the stuff from the capital J Journalists who went to fancy J Schools like Columbia, Northwestern and Missouri. You only care about people who have memorized Kovach and Rosenstiel's Elements of Journalism or people who have experience working at an actual daily newspaper.

Funny thing, CNN - I meet all your arbitrary criteria, but you wouldn't know that would you because you never bothered to ask.