Citizen Journalism

Steve Outing discussed the various ways members of the community could work as reporters in his article, "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism". The internet has done wonders in opening up new ways people can write and communicate, such as providing blogs and open chat forums. Some newspapers work with members of the community, inviting them to reply to stories or even write their own. There's no telling that there are numerous opportunities for people to get their stories out these days, but as far as citizen journalism goes, I agree with Outing that there is plenty of confusion and skepticism.

I do think it's a good idea to allow readers to comment on journalists' stories on the newspaper's website. This allows readers to add their knowledge and opinions on the subjects that interest them and promotes discussion between others who share the same interests. Stemming from this comes the second layer, add-on reporting. I like this for the same reason as public forums. When a citizen has more knowledge than a reporter possibly can on an issue, such as having personal experience, they can share it with other readers who may want to know more than the original information.

The next layer, open-source reporting, is where I start to have varying opinions. Open-source reporting is when journalists and community members work together to write stories. This includes announcing a story concept before writing it and asking readers to help, providing a draft of the story and allowing readers to edit or contribute more to the story, or even allowing those who have prior knowledge to do some actual reporting. In theory, it seems like a good idea because those who have prior knowledge can help guide a reporter. It also would help the reporter to ensure he was answering some of the questions that readers would want to know. I think it is very important for a journalist to cover the topics and issues which concern his or her readers. However, it seems like a lot of work for a journalist to keep up with all their questions and concerns. He or she might be getting the answers to the questions that some readers want to know, but couldn't possibly get to them all. I also question why a reader would want to do so much of the work for a journalist if they weren't getting paid. Also, where this type of reporting may help in some stories, reporters already do a pretty good job of doing their own reporting. It may help the news, but it seems like it would take away from the actual work of a journalist.

The next few steps incorporate blogging into new stories. I think its a good idea to provide stories that would be interesting to some, but are too narrow to include in a newspaper. After all, reporters are busy and can't cover every topic. Allowing readers to blog on the inner workings of a newsroom seems to be a good idea for a paper to consider. It seems like a PR approach because it would ensure that the newspaper is addressing the concerns of its readers. Some of these are edited and some aren't. I'm a bit confused as to how these types of things make their revenue. How do editors get paid, for example?

The next two layers allow community members to write their own papers, online and print version. This is where I really get skeptical. To me, I wouldn't consider this to be actual journalism. While it's nice to give people a chance to get out their story, they don't write in journalistic style and stories often include mistakes. I consider journalists to be skilled writers who are capable of getting words onto a paper in a way that others can understand. Not every one who contributes to these stories would have this skill. I don't think that just any one can be called a journalist, because it would take away from all the talent and work of actual journalists. I can see why some people would be interested in this, because they might consider it to be less biased or cover more topics, however I just truly believe it takes away from those who chose to go to school and become journalists.

Next, are layers that combine journalist and community member contributions. I specifically liked the idea of a paper that included stories from both sides. For example when there is an article written by both a critic and a member of a community on a new restraunt that just opened or a movie in the theaters. This would give readers as much information and prospective as possible, and isn't the main focus of journalism to inform?

Lastly, there is Wikinews, which allows any one to post a news story and then any one else to edit that story. I think this would be complete chaos. It seems like this would mostly just cause confusion by having different voices and writing styles incorporated into stories. Plus, who is to say who is right on what information?

Overall I have mixed feelings on citizen journalism. I think it's important to let people get out what they want to say, but I wouldn't necessarily call them journalists for doing so. Where I think some of the ideas are good I also can find much confusion. There is a lot to work out with these concepts and I'm interested in seeing where they go in the future.