"Citizen Journalism"

Pretty sure people are smart enough to know/notice the difference in quality. I have enough faith in readership for that.

As for them existing, I guess it leads back to your definition of journalism as to whether you're comfortable calling them journalists.

 

I'm ok with user-submitted videos, pics, etc. My main concern with applying the term "citizen journalism" to bloggers and such is that almost all of them present their information to prove their own particular point of view. There is no obligation for a blogger to be impartial or fair or objective. People can talk about journalists' innate bias and how influences the way they present news, but at least journalists are trained and obligated to present both sides of the issue, and when they fail to do so, there is a system there to hold them accountable. A blogger who only has to answer to himself has no such obligation, and I'm concerned that many readers AREN'T smart enough to distinguish between the two, especially with the whole "liberal media bias" rant going around. An average reader who doesn't know about the daily operation of a newspaper might think there's little difference between a journalist and a blogger. The key issue for me isn't so much the ability of citizen journalists to write about news events, but rather their accountability.

 

Reporters offer impartial news. Bloggers - like columnists - offer opinion and analysis. Not scary, man. In the marketplace of ideas, the more the merrier; let's let the marketplace decide who's full of crap and who isn't.

 

Are you kidding me? Let the marketplace decide? Staff sizes are shrinking and more of these "citizen journalists" are popping up to fill the void.
Right now, i think this is primarily a problem at Gannett papers, but upper management doesn't care that the every day person doesn't want to read a story written by Bob the Farmer. Management just cares about the bottom line.

 

"Citizen journalists" are probably easy to come by because so many people think they have something important to say. I don't mind some reader input, and I think readers enjoy it, but it is ridiculous to think any Joe off the street would make a good journalist. I know I wouldn't want my appendix removed by a "citizen doctor."

 

"Citizen journalist" = someone with way too much time on their hands

 

The Washington Post is doing its hyperlocal/citizen approach in Loudon with staffers, but most companies are relying on local yokels to tell their tales. Buddy of mine works at one of the industry's leaders in this arena, and he says there are good and bad aspects of it. It is different than blogging, which is more commenting; some citizens do report, on their own level.

 

For sure for sure. It's a valid point. But what I think newspaper-employed journalists - not you specifically, Peytons - get wrong most of the time is the nature of the reading public. True, many of the people who read our sports sections are idiots. But when we're reporting on, say, medicine or international law, a small subset of our readers will inevitably know far more than we do. We should encourage the good ones to help us.

 

This just struck me: the DocTalk doc on this site could well be a "citizen journalist" if he had a blog...if, for some reason, he wanted to spend his evenings writing diagnoses and forecasts for injured pro athletes on his own site, instead of providing them to us over the phone.

But because he'd be writing for his own website, some of you would consider him a clown, an enemy.

 

When I think "citizen journalist" as it pertains to our side of the newsroom, all I can see is the damn youth baseball mother that writes a story and sends 15 pictures of her son for "immediate publication".
I see the validity of eyewitness accounts, and in this digital age it is less talking to the eyewitness than letting the eyewitness do it his/her self, it's a good thing (in theory).
But I just hate being the one that has to read that damn story and edit it for print, takes much more work then it's worth at times.
Just my 2 cents.

 

I think the biggest danger here with "new media" are those journalists who actually quote blogs as gospel; it may not be an issue with the metros, but jeez, I see it with smaller pubs all the time, trade press too. Can't ever forget that there's NO VETTING PROCESS with a blog. It goes from the writer's brain to his fingers to the Net. That's a scary, unlined, unlit highway to travel if you ask me...

 

Like it or not, content from users is going to be around for a while (I started to say "here to stay," but who can say in this crazy business these days?).

I don't know that you can really connect staff reductions with additional "citizen journalism." The citizen stuff MIGHT be a way to get more people to read the paper, which we all want.

Tribune is doing something pretty interesting in this regard:

http://www.triblocal.com/