Citizen journalism & end of Bayosphere followup

This is an email from a list I'm on written by the publisher of Microenterprisejournal.com following the thread of the discussion about citizen journalism and who will write and how do you build a community around reporting. I couldn't have said it better myself.

You know, I have a feeling that the biggest lesson to take away from Dan's Bayosphere experiment is that citizen journalism is real and will play an important part of the future of the media ... but not quite the way that many people currently envision. Maybe citizen journalism is already happening but its not happening in the form of community journalism (i.e., an entire community turns into part-time reporters). Sheila makes a very valid point here: "It's fun to spout off anonymously, and even more fun to read what's really going on in the heads of apparently civilized Rhode Islanders. But unless an issue affects or offends you personally, it's unlikely you've been dying to be an unpaid reporter and just had no place to put your work." On the other hand, there is participant journalism. The biggest difference between the MSM and what people like Ina and Jen and I do is that we aren't necessarily journalists (J-school grads) writing about subject X. Rather, we do X (whatever X is) or have done it and, for one reason or another, decided to launch some form of news publication in order to inform other people who are doing the same thing. That, in its way, IS citizen journalism and while there are plenty of people out there like us, there are a lot more people who might be willing to comment on a message board or a blog than there are people who have the whatever-it-takes to go chase down the stories and write them. The biggest challenge for the profession, I think, is once again to help the consumer to separate the gold from the dross. There ARE a lot of folks out there publishing this or that for this or that niche. Some of the care more about quality, credibility and professionalism than others. Since so many of us participant journalists are not journalists by trade (however much we may care about maintaining the standards of the profession), we need a framework and direction ... just like Dan wrote. Cheers! Dawn

citizenjournalism