“In the end,” according to the report, “if the problems of network news can be mostly attributed to the decline in the overall audience of broadcast network television generally rather than something having to do with the newscasts in particular, then the survival of the networks’ news divisions in some ways may well depend on their liberating themselves from the broadcast television platform on which they were founded — and even perhaps from the networks themselves.”This could mean that citizen journalism is going to be more important than ever. One of the other panelists during my session at the 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism reported her findings about source diversity in newspapers versus citizen journalism sites. (See Serena Carpenter's paper on the site.). She discovered that citizens tend to source their stories with nonofficials and more women, among other findings. She also found that contrary to other studies, citizen journalists in her sample had original reporting the majority of the time (as opposed to merely aggregating information from other news articles).
We need to continue efforts to train and encourage such citizen journalism, lest our country's journalism becomes a one-stop super store.
6 comments:
I’m not too sure about this, and it’s not just because I’m a journalism student and trying to keep the job market open. Citizen journalists are great; they add a personal, warm little touch to the otherwise professional sites of CNN & NYT.com. They might even pick up on small news events that professional journalists don’t catch on to. And their videos are priceless – news cameras can’t be everywhere – I remember watching the Minneapolis highway bridge collapse last summer thanks to a Minnesota citizen’s camera phone.
But that’s where it should end. Professional journalists are professionals for a reason – I’m not going through half a decade of college courses to become a citizen journalist. There’s a reason Bob Herbert & David Brooks write for the NYT. They should stay where they are and citizen journalists should stay where they are – on YouTube & on a small “Citizen Journalist” link at the bottom of major online newspapers.
I believe that citizen journalists have the ability to bring about a different aspect of a story that a professional journalists because they are not being constrained by things like their corporation, editor or advertisements. Also, I agree that citizen journalists will be able to cover stories that the NYT or big news corporations are not as interested in or do have as much time to cover but they may be issues that the public is interested in. Yet I do see Joanna’s point that professional journalists are taught skills that citizen journalists are not. But then if we are getting all of our news from the same source are we really getting all the information? I feel that it is the professional journalists responsibility to the public and to have the social responsibility to share as much news with the public as it can. And maybe citizen journalism is the way for the public to satisfy its needs on obtaining that information. Maybe the audience needs to actively seek out their own information because now the journalists are no longer supplying them the adequate information.
I completely agree with you, Joanna. But I worry as more and more news outlets are cutting back on their coverage in all capacities. I have other issues with citizen journalists that have nothing to do with the ability of cjs to produce good journalism and more about our shifting cultural tendencies to emphasize our special interests, as we discussed in class.
I think most of us are in agreement that there are many fundamental dissimilarities between professional journalists and citizen journalists. But to play off Sue's point about shifting cultural tendencies, what happens when these citizen journalists become opinion leaders? Audiences and the public are lazy, so those citizen journalists who tend to write on biases are then just facilitating their bias to their audience, which seems to be growing. A CNN/CBS merger could mean a revolution in the citizen journalist realm. Hopefully, those who call themselves citizen journalists will seize the opportunity to make a difference and an impact in the world.
There is a reason why professional news organizations hire trained/educated journalist, but I do believe there is a time and place for citizen journalism. Citizen journalism adds a personal touch to the hard straight facts and information presented by beat writers and in some cases provides the only information about smaller, lesser known events that big news companies don't have the time to cover.
The reader of the newspaper or online version is aware of who wrote the article they're reading and take and use the information presented how they will.
I don't have any problem with the argument that citizen journalists have their place in the business. I feel everyone is entitled to their opinion and should have a way of conveying their message. I also think that if people didn't take citizen journalism seriously, we wouldn't be talking about it in class, on blogs, or even within our newspapers across the nation. Where it falls short however, is due to many of the same reasons. I think one of the major differences between citizen journalists and professional journalists is that professionals opinions are very well shaped because they know almost everything they need to know in order to let the public know. With citizen journalists, on message boards, blogs, etc, most of their points and opinions are from what they see, or what they hear. A lot of the times, those opinions are just modifications from something they read or hear from professional journalists. It's nice to see that they feel like they are making an impact, which I would argue they do, but at the same time I'm not sure how often it really is relevant to advancing a story.
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