"Opinion does not make citizen journalism"

Matthew Negrin of the New Hampshire Union Leader:

[J]ournalists are paid to inform the community.

So when people talk about citizen journalism replacing old-school journalism, I'm not exactly sure what they mean. Do they mean more people adding their opinions about community affairs? Do they mean more people reporting actual news by digging for secrets? Or do they just mean more blogging? It would be really great if some smart, aspiring citizen journalists could outline what exactly they plan to do to further the discussion of news instead of simply reducing it to personal opinion.

More here.

Citizen journalism welcome but must be edited, says Scripps publisher

Competitor Daily News reports that Memphis' E.W. Scripps-owned 168-year-old newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, has made "recent moves that severely cut the reporting staff, eliminated classified ads from the already thin Monday and Tuesday print editions and an admission that the [Appeal] probably won’t be covering less urgent topics in the future."

Appeal editor Chris Peck responds, “If we run out of people . . . , then we’re going to turn to freelancers and more community-generated content.”

Yet publisher Joseph Pepe, who insists the Appeal is profitable, seems to have rather strong views of that sort of content.

“All blogging is citizen journalism,” he told The Memphis News. “In a lot of cases it’s unsubstantiated. It’s not objective. It’s not edited content. It leans more toward opinion and subjectivity. Anytime we have citizen journalism, it’s still going to get edited. It’s still going to get verified. It’s going to get checked for facts before we post it. We apply the same rules to citizen-sponsored journalism as we do to our top line reporter.”

So does Otis L. Sanford, the Appeal's deputy managing editor.

Sanford said citizen journalism “has its place” and has been discussed since the early 1990s. It shows up in the pages he governs in the form of opinion pieces and letters to the editor. Non-newspaper employees also serve on the [Appeal's] editorial board.

“Now, I am a traditional, old-fashioned journalist,” Sanford said. “And I believe that while citizen journalism has its place, I’m not one – and maybe this is an old-fashioned view – but I’m not one to think that citizen journalism can ever take the place of the traditional journalism that I know and love. I just don’t believe that.”

Full story here.

Also read: A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists
And: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?
And: Mainstream media sites increasingly welcome citizen participation

Mainstream media sites increasingly welcome citizen participation

Any surprise in this Missouri School release? Not for me.

[D]espite ongoing reports of financial troubles and cutbacks, legacy media are more comprehensive and more technologically advanced than citizen media and bloggers.

But check out Mizzou don Esther Thorson:

One of the biggest surprises we found was that mainstream media Web sites were almost as welcoming to citizen participation as citizen journalism sites, and they were far more welcoming than blogs...

More here.

South African scholar explores how incentives to blog may enhance civic participation

What sustains bloggers? Is it public recognition, even if in the blogosphere? A perception of engagement in the community? A sense of fulfilling some purpose? Something more material?

Harry Dugmore, who holds the MTN Chair of Media and Mobile Communication at Rhodes University's School of Journalism and Media Studies in Grahamstown, South Africa, wonders:

[E]ven when a user generates great content and has a great experience doing so, or even when a citizen generates a good bit of journalism, why is the drop off rate so high? Even serious blogging sites see high attrition rates, with only a small group of hard-core bloggers blogging with reasonable regularity (and who knows what that is?!).

Mr. Dugmore is a Knight Foundation grantee trying "to better equip media producers in Africa with the skills and the software to use mobile phones to democratise both news production and news dissemination." He is helping create incentives for South African bloggers and citizen journalists.

We building platforms for user generated content and citizen journalism, and we're proving training to hundreds of school children on how to use the old/new technology of sms to contribute their issues, views, news, info, tips, photos....

What will keep users coming back to contribute more, and how, in resource deprived communities, do you remove financial disincentives - the costs of sms and using data - from getting in the way of an enlarged public sphere?

We're coming up with two sets of solutions - one educative, aimed at 'preparing the ground' for greater civic participation through the media, and the other compensatory and incentivising. Both are presenting interesting dilemmas. Here is one of the core issues to do with 'preparing the ground': in my next blog, I'll share some of our problems and solutions to the issues of reducing financial disincentives and creating a series of positive inducements for citizen journalism.

Find more here.

Bloggers killed the Rocky, avers Congressman Polis

Amusing exchange of the day:

Jared Schutz Polis, Colorado's wealthy U.S. Rep. (Dem.), quoted in today's Denver Post:

"Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? We're all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it's mostly for the better. . . The media is dead and long live the new media."

The response from John Temple, former publisher and president of the Rocky Mountain News:

"It's just another example of the poor judgment of Jared Polis. . . The Rocky Mountain News was a pioneer in citizen journalism and is an award-winning Internet newspaper."

Also read: Did the Newspaper Preservation Act encourage papers to ignore the competition?
And: Why, oh why did the Rocky Mountain News die?
Update (March 3): Jared Polis apologizes