Citizen Journalism

The evolution of journalism has been a slow progression over the years. Who knew that the controversies of yellow journalism that covered newspapers over a hundred years ago would develop into the current controversies over the growing practice of citizen journalism? According to online journalist Mark S. Luckie what separates citizen journalism from observations made by ordinary citizens is the “use of the net as an avenue to either aid or circumvent traditional media outlets and spread the news independently.”

According to Steve Outing writer for PoynterOnline there are “11 layers” or ways for citizens to become citizen journalist. He believes that “two-way conversation is an imperative characteristic of most citizen journalism, yet it appears to remain threatening to many people in the journalism and publishing professions.” Sites that he recommends that offer user comment opportunities are: InsideVC.com, PoynterOnline, and ZDNet.com.

Outing names several other ways for citizen journalist to incorporate themselves with traditional journalist. The most common of these methods is blogging which is an inexpensive but very powerful tool for non-journalist to express their thoughts to a large majority. Citizen journalists have also been known to write whole articles for citizen-journalism web sites such as MyMissourian, Westportnow, and iBrattleboro.com to name a few.

During the 2008 presidential campaign Huffington Post recruited 12,000 volunteers to gather news on the campaign for their citizen-journalism edition, Off the Bus.   Amanda Michel was made “editor of distributed reporting” for the edition. Michel believes that the debate over citizen reporting replacing traditional is irrelevant to the actual practice of journalism. “By focusing on who is doing it and making that the most important criteria, I think we actually lose sight of what journalism is.”

Though is has been controversial from its birth, citizen journalism has done nothing but expand its reach on the public and prove its necessity in our modern society. A big step for citizen journalism started with the Dan Rather incident on 60 Minutes in 2004. Dan Rather produced supposedly authentic documents that contradicted President George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. Bloggers pointed out inaccuracies in the document such as the “modern, computer-based font” used for a 1973 typewritten memo. The claims were later retracted.

Later that same year a tsunami hit Southeast Asia that destroyed the coast. Tourists caught the damage on film and distributed it via social networks and blogs. The London bombing of 2005, the Virginia Tech massacre and the California fires of 2007 also displayed the power of citizen’s ability to distribute faster and better content photos than the organized press.

Then in 2009 when the U.S. Airway 155 passenger airplane crashed into the Hudson River, it was Twitter user Janis Krum who was one of the first to break the news on Twitter with a detailed tweet and photo of the incident. Later traditional news organizations picked up the story but they relied heavily on the first hand accounts that were distributed by citizens. It is incidents like these that have instilled the importance of citizen journalism and the impact it has on our lives.

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