Citizen Journalism, Big Media Should Get Involved
Earlier this week Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher wrote an extensive article about the benefits of citizen journalism.
He contends that if the news media worked with citizen journalists, it would be a way of
regaining trust and credibility by losing the arrogance of the old way of doing journalism.
Unfortunately he says the feedback so far is that
too many people at leadership positions of major news organizations are in a defensive posture when it comes to citizen or participatory journalism.
However, Outing contends they best take notice because:
Citizen journalism does not have to be part of a traditional news organization. Entrepreneurs like the people behind BackFence.com, for example, are setting up community news Web sites supplied with content by the public. Free-classifieds powerhouse Craiglist is contemplating how to add a citizen-journalism component to its sites.
In other words, if news organizations don’t get on this now, others will beat them to it. (Let’s see: We’ve seen the same thing happen with online classifieds, auctions, online personals….)
