Holovaty Maps Out Citizen Journalism Terrain
Adrian Holovaty, creator of ChicagoCrime.org maps and now editor of editorial innovations for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, is subject of an Editor & Publisher Q & A on “everything from the citizen-journalism movement to open-source software development.”
Key issue keeps coming back, newspapers don’t react very well to innovation even though talented folks want to help, here is Holovaty:
I don’t see newspaper Web operations as particularly innovative. (I’ve considered leaving the industry a couple of times, for that reason, but a passion for journalism and freedom of information keeps me coming back.)
He adds:
Citizen journalism is an opportunity for local news to be created by people who actually care about a community. That sounds like a no-brainer, but I’ve consistently been surprised at how few journalists — at mid- to large-market newspapers — are “from” the town they’re covering. Reporters, from my experience, seem to go to the towns whose newspapers have reporter openings, not to the towns they know or care about.
