Let me explain, I lived in Minnesota for 18 years and was addicted to its public radio news and information station; that was true even before I went to work for Minnesota Public Radio.

Then I moved to Marietta, Georgia, where the local public radio station WABE provided too much classical music and too little news and information to satisfy my listening habits.

When I got in the car, I longed for my smart public radio news and information. Of course, I had an infinite number of other free radio stations to listen to, but I didn’t want junk, I wanted public radio news and information. So I bought a Sirius radio and paid $13 a month, $156 a year, to listen to the high quality public radio programming I wanted. That’s all I used the Sirius radio for, I rarely listen to much else.

Now that I have a iPhone, I am dumping my Sirius radio. Why? Because I can get even more high quality public radio news and information on my iPhone  via live radio or via podcasts that I save to the iPhone. Now I simply plug the iPhone into my car radio.

Soon all radio is going to be generated through something like an iPhone. So if I ran public radio, I would say, if you want high quality radio via your mobile device it will cost you or you don’t get it. Will I pay for it? Yes, certainly, I miss it too much not to pay. I value it.

Will I pay for it if they give it to me for free and then ask me for money, maybe.

Remember I was not paying for Sirius, I was paying 100 percent for public radio news and information.

So will people pay for high quality journalism and information? I do think so because I know one person intimately who already has. And trust me that person is very tight with his money.

Keep in mind, I am saying high quality news and information. Run of the mill junk is a worthless commodity. High quality journalism is scarce and will be more so in the future, and that’s when everyone who loves great journalism will begin to pay.

I am also talking about a brand that I know will deliver high quality information every day, so I am willing to pay in advance for that brand and its contents. Public radio and The New York Times are those brands.

Jeff Jarvis, thinks I am wrong, but we will find out who is right and who is wrong soon enough because if you want high quality news and information, you will have to pay for it. The big boys have finally seen the light.

When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.

As you probably know Rosen was one of the founders of the Public Journalism movement. I just finished writing a book review of The Pursuit of Public Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism by Tanni Haas. The review will be published eventually in the International Journal of Press/Politics.

Haas writes that public journalism’s:

…founding scholarly and journalistic advocates — Rosen included — have arguably failed to clearly articulate public journalism as a journalistic philosophy in its own right.

So Jay, is this definition the first step in clearly articulating citizen journalism as a journalistic philosophy in its own right? It would be nice.

By the way as I pointed out in a comment at Rosen’s site: Type in the URL citizenjournalism.org and see who owns it. Go ahead type it in now, I will see you back here in a couple of seconds.

Also in an earlier response to Jeff Jarvis, who was promoting “networked journalism” and wanting to kill off the phrase “citizen journalism,” I wrote:

I like the networked journalism concept, but to me the phrase networked journalism is a cop out, a phrase used to offend no one…

When we founded the Public Journalism Network, I did not want us to give up the name public journalism, even though, it was a hot button issue and had lots of baggage….

I also pushed for the former AEJMC Civic Journalism Interest Group to become the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

If we remove the words citizen, public, civic from the equation, it will be too easy to forget that this is about public, civic, citizen participation. This is not just about helping news operations to get a free staff or even developing better coverage, it’s a way of getting an engaged public to help build a bigger, better and stronger democracy.

Here is a quote from Adrian Holovaty, renowned journalism web developer:

“Journalism is broken,” he said – not because of citizen reporters or matters of privacy, but because journalists collect so much information and then don’t exploit it, while Google does.

There’s lots more where that came from including the likes of Jeff Jarvis and Arianna Huffington.

However, if you are one of the many serious thinkers who believe citizen journalism has merit,  you would be left with the impression that Weinstein himself is so wedded to old-school journalism that he is either a ”crackpot” or if not that, then one of its “sly marketers.”

Here is the tip off. He writes: 

If you could convince me that crowdsourcing and mojos and information centers weren’t about cost cutting or lazy journalism, I’d be all for them.

In the old-school journalism world, there would be no way for the passive audience to show how cracked his argument is, but in this new citizen journalism world there are plenty of people who can counter and expose Weinstein’s own lazy journalism and sly marketing for the past.

 However, you can see for yourself. First read Weinstein and then read this counter article in the Publishing 2.0 blog by Scott Karp. Were you better off just reading Weinstein’s professionally edited piece or did you need both to really get a sense of what citizen journalism is and where its potential lies?

There’s the Canon SD1000 for stills (the same model I already carry everywhere); a nice Panasonic 3-chip camcorder (consumer, not pro-sumer…we need to remain portable, you know); shotgun mic; an external hard drive the size of a Bible for footage; and a laptop the size of a boogie board (Dell, not MBP, but hey), all jammed into a spiffy and very comfortable backpack with our Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08 logos embroidered thereupon.

As they were filling his backpack, they were also filling his head with legal advice:

Yes, to appear in my videos — even if it’s because you stepped up to a microphone to ask John Edwards a question, in front of all those people and cameras — you need to sign my Guest Release. Otherwise, it’s the cutting room floor for you. I’m also going to need someone who is authorized to represent the Atlanta IBEW to sign my Location Agreement, saying I have permission to film there. Oh and I have to slap up Cablecast signs at the door, warning the rest of you that you’re wandering into the line of fire. Meanwhile, my MSM rivals will be pointing and laughing at me, who is now neither as credentialed as a “real” journalist, nor as free from restriction as a “citizen” journalist.

And who are those MTV citizen journalists:

The rest of the Street Team seems pretty cool — even the small handful of Republicans! Well, what do you want, it isMTV after all, so our conservative caucus definitely has the look of a token minority; but I’m sure Vermont, Rhode Island, Indiana, and I believe even Alaska (she’s hard to call) will do you right-wingers proud. The group is split right down the middle in gender, and, as an ever-so-slightly snarky article about our orientation in the Boston Globe says, we even have enough diversity to appeal to “Hispanics, African-Americans, and lesbians.”

She neglected to mention that we are also really, really, incredibly good looking, and do other stuff good, too.

By the way, Shelby will be at our SoCon08 conference on Feb. 8-9, 2008 at Kennesaw State University. We just broke the 146 registrant mark, so are on our way to 200 people at the conference. Having Shelby there will be like having your very own American Idol star sharing dinner with you. Who will you be dining with Friday night Feb. 8? Sign up now.

Yo, Shelby bring your gear. We want our MTV. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

So why did Rosen’s on the air comment seem to support Garfield’s assessment?   Rosen commenting at the On the Media website about Garfield, said:

.. he got the story–and facts–wrong, misreporting the sequence of what happened in Assignment Zero, probably because he had my part in the narrative all picked out before he did his interview with me.

Garfield asked me to start off by first telling his tape recorder what went right with Assignment Zero, and then what went wrong. Okay, I said

Then Rosen explains how he was caught in a reporting Gotcha moment, that in this case went bad. Want to get it right, go back in time to my interview: Tell Me Jay Rosen, Did Your Experiment Work? Also on the Garfield thing, I think Rosen is is still in his wind-up mode, the real hardball, mitt smacking moment is yet to come.

Here is are some of the issues Jeff Jarvis says he sees overriding parts of the conversation at the panels so far: 

Power of print still important at many of the websites, need to work out financial support models, what are the cost of getting people to participate, ownership issues, facilitating and mobilizing the audience, quality and risk, and new skills that are needed. Of course, when Jarvis is finished moderating, look for his interpretation of what he heard. 

This session:  What’s next, what’s needed:

What is need to help you move to the next level?  

What can be done to scale this up?  

 Mark Potts: You have to find an advertising model that works.

 Debra Gallant: Access to faster technological help.

Jonathan Weber: Need new ways of marketing.