Citizen Journalism
Over the past year, a number of high-powered journalists wrote articles that have disparaged “citizen journalism” and “blogs” as less than authentic sources of important news. They have basically said that these new media outlets can cover stories as sophisticated as local traffic jams and as complicated as announcing a school snow day. But in all this smug self-assurance and backslapping, one can smell their fear of the future. If the issue were so cut and dried, they would not have to say it so vociferously. Newspaper reporters are scared for their jobs. I would argue, however, that they have very little to fear from either blogs or citizen journalism. I’ll come back to this later.
What is important about personal blogs and citizen journalism is that they create conversations that make us a freeer people. The miraculous thing is that it does not matter how large one’s readership is. If no one reads a blog (and that’s almost never precisely true), than the blogger has at the very least personally benefitted from the experience. If the blogger has a million readers, so much the better. Most personal blogs are the not for profit kind. The most important benefit from these news sources is that it has the potential to allow the millions of articulate and literate men, women, and children to have a voice. The best outcome would be if these voices questioned conventional wisdom and fearlessly struggled to demystify the exceedingly complex issues of the day. In these pursuits they rely in part on professional reporters and authors.