"It's not
hard to see why Santa Ana is floundering under more than a $40 Million
dollar budget deficit," says Thomas Gordon in his OC Blog entry. "Why is Santa Ana,.... tossing out an
additional $162,911 to a bidder that should have accurately bid on the scope of
work?"
Gordon's criticism
of local spending exemplifies the OC Blog's purpose. The website functions as
an Orange County Republican watchdog network, a forum for citizen journalists
to share information with other OC GOP-ers about local political happenings.
According to the Blog it "aims to educate readers, spark discussion, and forge
common ground among the most distinguished political and business leaders,
activists, and organizations in Orange County." The OC Blog has become the
go-to place to learn about local Republican affairs.
The OC Blog
captures the two primary functions of citizen journalism. First, it provides
the community a convenient social networking forum. People who share local
political interests come together and coordinate themselves; it works as an
effective community-organizing tool. Second, participants give a first person
perspective on events and provide input on a hyper-local level. Their accounts
act neither as a passing interest nor something someone assigned he or she to
investigate. Rather than taking that quick bite of the world, citizen journalists
share a bit of their own lives and contribute unique insight. The clips
witnesses posted of the Mumbai attacks (2008), the Virginia Tech shootings
(2007) and the London Bombings (2005), for example, all testify to the idea of
sharing personal life bites. These happenstance citizen journalists exposed
what was a local issue for them and turned it global with the World Wide Web.
Citizen journalism
challenges professional journalism in several ways. Due to the very nature of
citizen journalism, citizen journalists develop a much stronger connection with
readers than their professional counterparts. The stories written by citizen
journalists communicate directly to their website participants. In addition, citizen journalists have
an easy time writing about the genuine interests and concerns of the community
because they are active participants within that community. Professionals
should use citizen journalist websites as places to look for leads.
Dr. Bentley, Journalism Professor at the University of Missouri, explains, "The essence of new journalists is to treat the Internet as a massive wire service upon which billions of stories run each day. New journalists can search through this mass to find content most appealing to his or her readers."
Professionals should also take advantage of citizen journalists who act as watchdogs. The Exposing Earmarks project, a website created to expose the pork added to congressional spending bills, demonstrates a great example of citizen watchdog work. Each time citizens uncover new pork it gives professionals an opportunity to write a full story about it. Citizen watchdogs also better the field by pressuring journalists to get the facts right a hundred percent of the time. They prevent dishonest reporting like Rathergate, an incident where CNBC correspondent Dan Rather misreported a story about President Bush and his National Guard service, from happening again. Perhaps if Rather had leaked some of his material before running it on air, citizen watchdogs could have saved him instead of embarrassing him out of his career.
Citizen journalism should not be perceived as a threat but as an opportunity for change and innovation.
Sources:
Bentley, Clyde. "Citizen Journalism: Back to the Future?" Discussion paper prepared for
the Carnegie‐Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism, Cambridge, MA.
June 20‐21, 2008.
Gillmor, Dan. We the Media:
Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
O'Reily Media Inc.: Sebastopol, CA. 2006.
Glaser, Mark. "Your Guide to Citizen Journalism." Media
Shift: Your Guide to the
Digital Media Revolution, Public
Broadcasting Service. Sept. 27, 2006.
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody. Penguin Group Inc.: New York, NY. 2008.
Wagner, Mitch. "CNN Creates Citizen Journalism Channels on
Web, In Second Life."
The Information Week Blog: The
Information Week Business Technology Network. March 24, 2008.
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