Johann Gutenburg, a goldsmith, invented the movable metal type printing press in 1440. By the end of that century, his invention was being used to mass produce books in more than 2,500 cities across Europe.

Wikipedia, meanwhile, tells me that a certain Johann Carolus was the publisher of what is generally recognised as the world’s first newspaper, Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (‘Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news’). The German Relation was published in Strasbourg, an imperial free city in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In 2005, the World Association of Newspapers accepted that the printing of Carolus’ pamphlet began in 1605 (not 1609) as had been previously understood.

Print journalism – in the mass-produced form by which it is characterised today – has been with us for many centuries. In later times, technology expanded the field and changed its forms: wireless telegraphy, telephones, radio and television, satellite beaming and links-up changed not only the processes of news gathering but the manner in which it was disseminated.

News first travelled across town, then breached city boundaries and went on to circulate across entire countries. From there it was but a short step for the news (and newsmen) to cross the great oceans and bring to their audiences events in other countries, hop nonchalantly from one continent to another and send information across the globe with, by the late 20th century, no perceptible time delay. Certainly, much changed in journalism over the centuries. Yet one aspect remained always constant: news gathering and distribution was always a specialised, top-down process. The news was ‘gathered’ or written up by few people – specialists, if you will – while expanding technologies allowed the finished product to be consumed by an ever-growing bank of audiences.

The problem with this method was that it was restricted to the perspectives of individual journalists and to the policy or general slant of the news organisation. The consumer remained passive: he took in what he read or heard or saw on the news. While he had the right to reject it, he was never in a position to publicly challenge what the media professionals deemed ‘news’. And while increasing options allowed the consumers’ passivity to be mitigated to some extent by choice, it nevertheless remained a choice between this organisation or that, X reporter’s credibility and reputation versus Y’s. Until about a decade ago, no news consumer – or producer, for that matter – could have imagined a situation where this apparently uncompromising law of the field could be side-stepped.

Today, however, we can see the previously unthinkable happening everywhere around us, fortunate as we are to witness the nascent years of an age when technology is beginning to allow passive news consumers to become active producers. A boundary that was once rigid is blurring every day, perhaps even being eroded.

The most significant technological advances in this context were the development of the internet (generally attributed to American computer scientist Vinton Cerf in 1973) and the development of the world wide web in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee (who, incidentally, could have patented or copyrighted his idea but chose – fittingly so, in context of the effects of the web – to give the world unfettered and free access).

So now we live in a world where formal forms of the media are being rapidly challenged by what has been referred to as the ‘citizens’ media’ — forms of gathering, relaying and distributing to a potentially unlimited audience the news, views and opinions of average Joes such as you or I. We don’t have to be journalists, reporters or media moguls to report on events as they happen around us – we just have to be reasonably tech savvy.

Millions of people across the globe now maintain blogspots, are signed up to online discussion fora and regularly exchange articles and footage that fall within the realm of the news. Formal news organisations such as the BBC ask audiences to ‘Help us make the news’ by sending in eyewitness accounts, viewpoints, photographs and footage.

Wikipedia allows us to contribute to an immediately accessible encyclopaedic database and even include entries that the editors of the Britannica may never have thought of … the history of my hometown in the mountains of Pakistan, for example, of which I find ample information, including some that is part of local legend, on the online encyclopaedia. Lest there be fears of checks and balance, Wikipedia uses a system of multiple scrutiny with each ‘editor’ keeping an eye on untold numbers of his colleagues. Few reporters, perhaps, have ever had to deal with so many and such nit-picking editors.

Similarly, there is YouTube, where you can find anything from a video of a little-known spoof Star Trek song recorded over two decades ago, to footage of policemen roughing up citizens on Islamabad’s Constitution Avenue.

With sites such as these and relatively pedestrian equipment such as cellphone cameras and voice recorders, web cams and the humble keyboard, any citizen can change the world. Some of the most arresting footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 northern Pakistan and Kashmir earthquake, for example, came from citizens with cellphones or video cameras who simply happened to be there before any journalists and ended up with images that any journalist would have happily given his eye-teeth for.

More recently in Pakistan, the course of history changed when cell phone footage uploaded on YouTube indicated that Benazir Bhutto was shot. Images captured by non-media professionals were picked up by newspapers and television channels, and prompted greater inquiry into the affair than may have ensued had there been no such incriminating evidence – or had that evidence been the property of an identifiable person or organisation who could have been leaned upon to keep quiet, rather than being in amorphous circulation on the web. So too did the citizens’ media change things when hard evidence of poll-rigging in Karachi was uploaded after the Feb 18 election.

What is perhaps most encouraging about the developing citizens’ media is the fact that it is not subject to censorship through intimidation, blackmail or even law. The law can be poorly thought-out – a case in point being the post-Nov 3 Pemra restrictions on reports concerning the president, the army or the general good of the country. Particularly in situations or countries where alternate truths or viewpoints are unwelcome, the citizens’ media plays a vital role. And the difficulties in controlling this form of informally-gathered and disseminated news were recently recognised, to its cost, by the government of Pakistan.

There is a flip side, of course: unregulated ‘news’ can often be pure fabrication. (Recall an episode some years ago when KFC was falsely charged with growing headless chickens in labs; the story was circulated on the web, complete with eyewitness accounts and photographs, and was embarrassingly picked up by a few credible print media organisations.) But in this context, it is also true that most web users are aware of such dangers and are savvy enough to cross-check.

At any rate, it is certain that this change in the gathering and distribution of news is significant, perhaps doubly so because of the implications it holds for formal networks. Immediate evidence of audience interests through feedback on web editions, for example, may prompt the media organisation to give the issue greater follow-up than may otherwise have been the case.

Similarly, the citizens’ media can bring about a change in the perception of an issue … the ‘hard news’ coming from Zimbabwe prior to the elections, for example, was quite different from what was being said on blogspots, which arguably created greater worldwide awareness of and sympathy for the average Zimbabwean’s situation.

Given that active and participating news producers, rather than passive consumers, are now a reality, will formal media organisations have to eventually redefine their roles and goals? That remains to be seen. At the moment, they appear to be attempting wherever possible to induct the citizens’ media into their own output, through readers’ comments and help us make the news mechanisms.

Which way the world turns next, though, will be interesting since the remarkable aspect of the citizens’ media is that it is not dependent on advertisements or the need to earn revenues … it depends on millions of citizens acting independently yet coming together on a different level to form a cohesive whole.

Post script: Rightly credited though he is as the man who made mass printing possible and popular in the West, from where the process was gradually adopted around the world, Gutenburg was not, in fact, the person who actually came up with the idea and method of movable type printing. That honour goes to China where in 1041 AD, a man called Bi Sheng invented a method of using movable clay type in printing presses. It is not known whether or not Gutenburg was aware of or influenced by Sheng’s work.

In China, Sheng’s method did not immediately replace the traditional form of printing from individually-carved wooden blocks. Generally, this preference is attributed to the many thousands of characters in Chinese languages — in the more restricted (character-wise, that is) Latin-based European languages, the benefit of movable type printing presses was blindingly obvious.

And the noun ‘broadcasting’ came from an agricultural term meaning ‘scattering seeds’.

— hmumtaz@dawn.com