Review: Dan Gillmor's We the Media

I've just finished Dan Gillmor's We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People as part of my research into citizen journalism. You can read my Goodreads review if you'd like as well.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The stories made it quite easy to get through, though as I noted in my Goodreads review, the examples also dated the book quite quickly. Something I'd like to add that I didn't get to talk about before was Gillmor's brief discussion of copyright at the end of his book. Part of the reason I was left with a good feeling at the end of the book was the way he presented his views on copyright, which corresponded very nicely with mine.

Gillmor supports copyright. He thinks that creators should have incentive to create. However, current copyright law is abusive, and stems creativity (especially since there is no more incentive for creators to be creative if their copyright extends 70 years beyond their death than if the copyright period was much, much shorter). Gillmor licensed this book under a Creative Commons license, which is like saying, as he claims "Some rights reserved." He still believes he and the publisher will benefit from the production of the book, but he has also left it open to inspire more people creatively.

I'm glad I read this book, but I know I'm not done yet. It's time to expand to new citizen journalism horizons.