Wesley's Blog

In general, citizen journalism is when memebers of the public do essentially what professional reporters do – collect, report, analyse news and information which can be taken into many forms, for example, a podcast editorial or a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can also contain text, pictures, audio and video while basically it is all about communicating information in some ways. According to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

A main feature of citizen journalism is that it’s usually found online. It is believed that citizen journalism is made possible since the hugh development of Internet such as blogs podcasts, videos heappened in the recent decade.

On the other hand, there are a lot of critisisms about citizen journalism as well. Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the exactitude and ethics involved in reporting news. Also, an article in 2005 (Grassroots journalism: Actual content vs. shining ideal) by Tom Grubisich reviewed ten new citizen journalism sites and found many of them lacking in quality and content.