THE INITIATIVE taken by Merinews to organise India’s first series of meetings of citizen journalists was a unique one and welcomed by the participants. The recent and well-attended meeting held in Mumbai focused on what could be the role of citizen journalists and what should be the areas, which should be focused on.

All agreed that the emergence of citizen journalism will lead to democratisation of the media – which has been largely a one-way street till now. The Internet and the mobile phone have enabled the alert and concerned citizen to talk to the world, largely on one’s own terms and let it be known what he or she thinks is important.

Most of the participants, very naturally, felt that developmental issues, issues of social injustice, corruption and other such issues should be focused on. Commentary on these subjects paints a very grim picture of the country generally. It does cater to the cynic in us.

A participant felt, that a lot of good is happening in the country and it is going unreported. So the reader does not get a balanced view of the world at large, or the inspiration to replicate such success stories.

Here I seek to relate my own perception of Good News vs Bad News. It is said, the coherence of negatives is stronger than the coherence of positives. A false rumour of a riot spreads faster than factual news of a peace treaty. Everyone loves a good draught, but nobody notices a plentiful harvest. Dishonesty is reported, but honest lifelong service goes unreported. Ditto for success vs failure.

Bill Moyers, one time top aide to President Johnson, ventured to bring out a newspaper which would publish only good news and predictably - it wound up soon. The truth is that bad news titillates but good news does not tickle us.

With the advent of mass culture and democratisation of media comes the inevitable dumbing down. Both the print media and TV have to pander to the lowest common denominator. Shahrukh Khan and Dhoni’s new hairstyles hit the headlines on the first page of mainline papers. A panelist from a TV channel confessed that even news channels have to stoop to cover Rakhi Sawant’s jhatkas and matkas, all in search of higher TRP (Television Rating Point) ratings. Another panelist confessed that much against his good sense, he had to dispatch a reporter to cover Aishwarya Rai’s broken toe, when the same reporter could have been spared for a more pressing event of greater public concern.

Democratisation and dumbing down of media have been criticised for the inevitable lack of depth. An expert journalist’s eye for detail and taking a detached view is missing. As citizen journalism takes off, while we laud the democratisation, we have to guard against wasting our resources on superficiality, trivia and the profane. It is worth quoting from We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis.  “The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.

Both the CJ contributors and the editors have to team up to provide a platform, which promotes equity and inclusiveness for all sections of society, so that not only India shines but Bharat also shines. How to make Good News attractive to the reader and to make the revenue model viable, without dumbing down the contents, is the challenge.

Here, it may be worthwhile to evaluate www.goodnewsindia.com, which has been publishing exclusively good news since 2000 and had three million page views in June 2007.