Citizen Journalism - In the News

The Ventura County Star has added a new feature called YourHub where the citizens of Ventura County may add their own news or even OpEd pieces.

The Washington Post invited anyone with a DC oriented blog to come to Post headquarters on January 9th and discuss ways to collaborate with the newspaper. The Post is willing to funnel ad revenue over to the bloggers when appropriate.

Deloitte's Media Predictions of 2007 says that citizen generated content "may offer more of an opportunity than a threat" to main stream media.

The Pasadena Weekly claims that the age of citizen journalism is upon us. I think I've seen this story elsewhere as well.

USC Annenberg's Online Journalism review says "Let's quit arguing the merits of "mainstream" versus "citizen" journalism and instead work together on "better" journalism."

And the Electric News Network tells us that the mobile phone spurs citizen journalism.

Buzzword

Citizen journalism is the buzz word du jour. Obviously we feel strongly about it. And why not? As many photographers and journalists are out there in the world, they can't be everywhere at once. As the trend grows, I suspect we will see some journalists protesting - after all they went to college for 4+ years to learn all about writing or taking photos. How does the average citizen guarantee to be unbiased? With Adobe Photoshop and similar programs available, how do we know the photo is genuine and not altered? The truth is, we don't. However, I think the course of citizen journalism will be self-correcting. If too many altered pictures come to light, the media and the public will no longer accept it. And believe me, altered photos may be published, but it will be a rare one that isn't exposed eventually.

The originality of our news and photos has fast been disappearing over the past few years. When you pick up your hometown newspaper - how many articles have been gleaned from the Associated Press or Reuters? When you look at the weekly magazines at the supermarket, how many identical photos do you see in different magazines from the same large conglomerate photo agencies? The first time you see the Golden Globes dress review, maybe you care. By the time you've seen it in the 7th magazine?

Tonight, the places to be for a photographer are in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, at the premiere of "Breaking or Entering" in New York or in Los Angeles, your pick of the premieres of "Funny Money" or "Smokin' Aces". At any one of these events, there are between 30-60 photographers. Imagine being the photo editor looking through 100 or more photos from each of these photographers tomorrow morning. Now imagine being the photo editor and seeing that great shot of ______ (fill in the blank). That there is only one of, because Joe/Jane Smith - Citizen at Large - was the only one on the scene. Which photo are you going to use?

Money, Money, Money

Participatory news network- NowPublic.com offers up prizes for the most newsworthy citizen generated photos.

Get your photo published in jpg magazine, win $100 and get a year subscription. What's not to love?

And of course! The Citizen Image Assignment Board. Check out our assignments- maybe something you've shot recently fits the bill? Maybe you live across the street from one of the location assignments? Send in your photos and we will get them to the editors.

A new idea?

Citizen generated content used to be relegated to the Sunday Op-Ed pieces or Letters to the Editor in the main stream media, maybe the occasional hard-to-find fanzine. Enter the internet and citizen generated content explodes. There may be a few people out there unaware of blogs or sites like Flickr. Then again, those same people may be using their mouse as a foot pedal. News bloggers are becoming as influential as the New York Times, media credential request forms now ask if you have a website, celebrity bloggers are used as sources for weekly magazines and today's Webster's Dictionary - Wikipedia- is edited by anyone and everyone. I wonder how many teachers shudder when they get Wikipedia listed as a primary source on a research paper?

Citizen photojournalism has been getting a lot of press lately. The horrifying photos and video of the plane crashing into the World Trade Center and the abuse photos from Abu Ghraib were generated by citizens. Saddam Hussein's execution on the camera phone video shows a different story than the government mandated execution video. Michael Richard's angry, racist tirade might never have received the press it did without the cellphone camera documentation. The UCLA student who was repeatedly tazed by college police might have been a small item found on the back of page 11.

With Reuters and Yahoo embracing the phenomenon, I think we can safely say that news resulting from citizen images is here to stay. Just in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of citizen photojournalism! Six years after the introduction of the Brownie Camera, San Francisco was rocked to the core by the 1906 earthquake. The names of the photographers have been lost to time, but the power of their images still remains. Citizens photographed all aspects of one of the greatest natural disasters the US has every experienced and many of their photographs live to tell the tale.