SPJ offers citizen journalism workshop in Denver on May 9

The Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado chapter, will organize a citizen journalism workshop at the Denver Newspaper Agency building (from where the Denver Post is published) on Saturday May 9.

The half-day workshop, christened a "Citizen Journalism Academy," will teach "journalism values to private citizens who have started covering their own communities online," according to a release.

Such workshops have already been held in Chicago, Greensboro and Los Angeles, the release added.

The Gazette of Colorado Springs reported, "The topics covered at the workshop [will] include journalism ethics, media law, access to public records and meetings, and the use of technology."

One of the organizers [of the workshop], Christine Tatum, said citizen journalists are reaching out for higher standards - to report news and opinion with integrity and in a way that engages the audience.

"Journalism is everyone's right," said Tatum, a former president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "It's a beautiful thing to me that absolutely everyone in the United States is free to practice journalism."

Experts debate if bloggers would do well to flow with the mainstream

"Experts" aside, it seems Jared Polis suffers from a foot-in-the-mouth affection. Nearly three weeks after the Colorado Congressman (rather insincerely) apologized for his comment about the Rocky's demise, he's at it again.

Polis laid a challenge at the feet of citizen journalists. Keep evolving, he told the "netroots," those amateur journalists and bloggers.

He asked them to tell him "what kind of content do you want your citizen journalists in Congress and your state legislatures to produce for you. What would be valuable?"

"Clearly mainstream media has never told a good story, or a real story about what goes on," he said. "Now even less so."

More of Polis, and finally the experts, at the Denver Post.

Also see: "Most two-newspaper towns will likely disappear"
And: Did the Newspaper Preservation Act encourage newspapers to ignore the competition?
And: "Bloggers killed the Rocky"
And: "Why did the Rocky Mountain News die?"