That's the title of a Wired News article on technology journalist Dan Gillmor. He has just written a book called We The Media and was a speaker at a recent conference in Toronto which I attended.

That conference was called Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism.

Public journalism, roughly speaking, is about helping people become citizens and not just passive consumers.

Participatory journalism can take many forms, one of which is blogging. At the conference, held Aug. 3, Gillmor addressed many of the same issues he does in the Wired interview.

We're All Journalists Now 

Xeni Jardin  

02:00 AM Aug. 11, 2004 PT

As columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, veteran Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor has covered the bubble, boom, bust and continuing evolution of the tech industry for over a decade. Along the way, he has become an increasingly influential voice in exploring how technology changes media -- and how it changes us in the process.

In his new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, Gillmor chronicles the social and economic impact of weblogs, wikis, mobile technology and other networked phenomena on the business of news. Are bloggers journalists? Will phonecams kill the video star? Do more voices add up to more truth in media? Can you really trust everything you read on an RSS feed? Wired News spoke with Gillmor while he was on the road in Europe.