Who knew that I would be so interested in citizen journalism??
Maybe it comes from several years aspiring to be a magazine editor before realising the fickle nature of the industry and peanuts-for-pay. But I do have a keen interest in publishing and hope to write freelance when I finish uni, so this topic has got me hooked.
I have identified several important topics of discussion when considering citizen journalism. These are:
1. The impact of citizen journalism on traditional news and entertainment publications.
2. The way in which citizen journalism has enabled everyday people to contribute to online news and to which extent this is possible.
3. The ownership of online citizen journalism sites and the possible censorship involved.
4. Is every piece of footage and blog content about current events citizen journalism? How does this fit into Axels idea of citizen journalism being community based, monitored and collaboration.?
I would like to start by drawing your attention to this YouTube clip:
This is a great overview of citizen journalism, and explains the way it has infiltrated daily life. The way in which our involvement with news has changed dramatically in my lifetime and I am only (nearly) 21.
When beginning to look further into the phenomenon changing news production around the world, it was ironic that I first turned to traditional print stories (online at least) written by professional journalists. Factiva provided me with some interesting articles about the way in which citizen journalism is spreading and what kind of effect it is having on the journalism industry.
This one took my eye: “Move Over: Journalists Will Have to Share Their Space”
As an ex-journalist the author of this article is very much on track. Even after all the time he has had working in the print industry he has found it easy to switch over, though not completely, and contribute to online news. I love that he points out the need for multi-media platforms when producing news, in order to provide a fantastic service that people will love. It is the publications that were solely reliant on advertisers that are failing to stay in the race. The article states “Reporters, feature writers and commentators are getting used to making podcasts and videocasts. They are producing copy for instant transmission on the net while managing to provide added value for their contributions to the printed newspaper.” Advertisers have seen the sense in using sites with large amounts of daily traffic to display their ads, rather than use newspapers. In this case it seems convergence is a necessity rather than a novelty.
This slideshow covers the main points well:
I am unsure of whether or not the increased accessibility to reading an producing news is beneficial to society, or if it will simply cause more controversy and make news ‘cheap’. More on this in my next post...
To Be Continued.
1 comment:
I must admit this entry seemed a breath of fresh air, that is in comparison to some other blogs. I see it as a easy to follow and well structured argument with enough evidence through hypertext to support everything you mentioned.
Of particular interest to me was your suggestion that traditional journalists CAN work alongside citizen journalists in the digital world. I have only seen over the last few weeks posts that digital civilian journalism is threatening traditional journalists but yours has persuaded me to think differently about the future of both traditional and civilian journalism.
I also think your introduction where you examined how citizen journalism has entered everyone’s life but they may not have recognized it for what it actually is. I think you could also expand on this topic, although difficult with word limits, that people may not recognize civilian journalism as something different to traditional journalism. For instance perhaps someone may not know that a specific author is not a journalist but just someone interested in the topic at hand.
In short I thought this was a brilliant piece and it actually had me continue reading into your second post on the same topic. Well done.
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