Citizen journalists should be wary of distracting or ego-stroking media coverage

David Sasaki directs Rising Voices, a Web platform set up to "empower under-represented communities to make their voices heard online."

In a new column, the 2007 Knight News Challenge winner hints at his struggle to keep the focus.

Rising Voices began with the goal diversifying the viewpoints and content on the conversational web by including members of communities that have historically been excluded from both traditional and new media. However, we quickly came to realize that these projects should meet the needs of the members of the participating communities and not just the needs of international news junkies looking for a story that no one else knows about. Mobile Voices, I believe, came to the same realization. Rather than just changing popular perceptions of migrant workers, several of the participants mentioned their desire to use their mobile phones to find work and send out alerts about immigration raids.

Also see, How training can help citizen journalists

How training can help citizen journalists

David Sasaki, the Latin American blogger who also operates Rising Voices, has an IdeaLab post in which he supports training programs for citizen journalists.

As Juliana and I emphasized during a presentation at last year's MobileActive conference in South Africa, just because over three billion people are equipped with cell phones, which can be used as tools for reporting during emergencies, that doesn't mean the world has three billion citizen journalists ready and able to cover every natural disaster, political uprising, and news-worthy event they encounter.

The recent coverage of Tropical Storm Eric, Cyclone Fanele, and the ongoing protests and political turmoil in Madagascar by local citizen journalists reveals the importance of 1.) citizen journalism training programs, 2.) the translation and contextualization of local content for a global audience, and 3.) networks of media groups so that local voices can be amplified and understood when breaking news hits.