Citizen journalists will bring the what, while professionals bring the why

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Citizen journalism is a gift to journalism, professional journalists and people all over the world.

It’s an army of active citizens who want to report about the world around them — for free. They can cover far more ground than professional journalists and can provide coverage of events as they happen in real time — not afterwards. 

As a reporter you can’t be everywhere, but billions of people are everywhere.

That’s the power of citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism won’t replace in-depth reporting anytime soon — if ever. You probably won’t see citizens uncovering government corruption, but citizen journalism offers the ability to cover breaking news better than professional journalists ever could. Faster, better, uncensored and in real-time.

Wherever news breaks, there are always people around, but there aren’t always journalists around. Increasingly, these people are armed with mobile devices with Internet access that can post text, photos and videos from anywhere.

twitpic

When you think about the power of citizen journalism, and how increasingly news stories will break first by everyday citizens instead of by professional journalists, one has to ask how much resources should news outlets dedicate to covering breaking news?Should professional journalists be belatedly duplicating the work of citizen journalists? Citizens can handle the what, while professional journalists can handle the why.

That’s the power of professional journalism.

Camera phones, smartphones, Web apps like Twitter and other technologies are helping make citizen journalism a reality. It’s just so easy today to report on the world around us, many people are asking, why not?

Why not snap a few photos with a cell phone and send them in to Twitpic? Why not send off 140-character bursts to Twitter and other micro-blogging services? Why not make a short blog post to WordPress or TypePad via their free mobile versions? Why not record real-time video and broadcast it to the world with Qik?

And this is just the beginning. A year from now more people will have more capable mobile devices, existing services like Twitter will be more robust with more users and many new Web apps will pop up. Imagine five years from now. 10 years from now?

I’m excited, and we are just in the nascent stages of citizen journalism. Combine citizen journalism with beat blogging, and I think we have a path forward that will allow news organizations to cover a lot more ground with a lot fewer resources. Better coverage with less. I like the sound of that.

Instead of fighting citizen journalism or debating whether or not an “ordinary” person can be a journalist, news organizations should be building platforms to aggregate this disparate content. The huge negative of citizen journalism is that it exists on a myriad of platforms and is produced by many, many people. We can build platforms that bring in quality citizen journalism to a central location.

We can build platforms that combines citizen journalism and professional journalism. There are millions upon millions of people armed with the tools necessary to perform citizen journalism. Professional journalists should concentrate on harnessing that resource instead of fighting it.

They’ll bring the what, we’ll bring the why, and journalism will be better than ever before. It’s not us versus them. It’s we. 

Here are some of major events that broke first on Twitter:

  • Hudson River plane crash — As you can see from the above photos, Twitter and Twitpic make it incredibly easily for anyone to report on the world around them. 
  • Mumbai terror attacks — Citizens captured the horror of terrorism in real time. #Mumbai became allowed for incredible insight into this event.
  • Earthquake in China — The press may not enjoy a lot of freedoms, but it’s hard to stop people in real time from reporting their experiences and thoughts. Twitter and other Web apps may usher in more freedoms for Chinese citizens and journalists. 
  • http://twitter.com/twusiness Jason Finch

    Citizen journalism will always be great for the big stories, the ones that affect thousands of people or are of major interest worldwide… the BBC recently received the most texts, videos and photos ever sent by viewers for just one story; it was the snow that brought much of England to a standstill. Tens of thousands of local reports from all parts of the country; even with the BBC’s mass of journalists it could never have hoped to get so much from so many places.

    But for the other stories, particularly the type you mention but also small local interest stories, it’s always going to need pro-active journalism and I think some of the most interesting stories can be the interesting little local stories about real people that would otherwise get no coverage at all… I’m not sure citizen journalism would ever bring them to mass attention.

    Social media’s great for spreading big news fast – even big news that professional journalists may have put together but for which they’ve been unable to find a major outlet for whatever reason. Social media’s a great one for “levelling the playing field”.

  • http://agingreluctantly.com Harold Shaw

    My question on citizen journalism has to do with Capitalism, If a paid journalist takes information originally started by a citizen journalist and then gets paid for it, who pays the citizen journalist for their efforts? Should they get paid or simply be an information source.

    If the “news” uses a citizen journalist Twitpic what happens?

    I love citizen journalism, but if the news journalist jump and take it over it seems kind of shall we say “unfair” especially if there is no credit given where credit is due. Sooner or later that will become a huge “copyright” issue for the Courts to decide.

    I would like to see your premise be true, “It’s not us versus them. It’s we.” but many journalist see it the other way around. :)

    Until then long live citizen journalist – keep what is actually happening out there coming, it gives more than just one view of what is happening in the world beyond FOX, CNN, and all the other media outlets who have their slant that they give to the news for better or worse.

  • http://www.john-zhu.com/blog John Zhu

    I agree with Jason’s comment about the difference between how much citizen reporting you get for huge news events vs. the run-of-the-mill daily news. While the cases of citizen journalism we’ve seen for the major events are a good “highlight reel” for citizen journalism, journalism doesn’t just come to play when big events break and goes to bed the rest of the time. Given that difference, it would be difficult for professional news orgs to cut back significantly on their coverage of breaking news on the assumption that there will be enough coverage from citizen journalists. It’s one of those cases where if there is, then great, but if there isn’t, then who gets the blame for being asleep on the job, the citizen journalists or the professional journalists? The latter, of course.

    One other point: The “citizen journalists will bring the what, and professional journalists will bring the why” idea overlooks the fact that usually you can’t get at the why without thoroughly understanding the what. In fact, it’s impossible to cover the why without covering the what. Say there’s a 14-car pileup. How can a reporter give analysis and explanation for WHY it happened without first getting the facts about WHAT happened? Yes, use citizen journalism to help with the coverage of the what, but you can’t really spend significantly less time covering the what because that’s the first step to covering the why.

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  • http://thatsquirrel.wordpress.com Corey Schubert

    My main concern with citizen journalism is the ability for the public to fabricate news that could quickly spread and be misinterpreted as fact.

    By the time a professional journalist followed up with a factual story that clarified things, plenty of damage already could be done.

    A citizen journalist can easily create a fake image using Photoshop and publish it online, causing all kinds of panic. Even a few words on Twitter could cause mass confusion. Imagine if someone Twittered a message that the president just passed away, or that a nuclear explosion just devastated part of the country.

    That said, there certainly is also a real benefit to the input from citizen journalists.
    In an age when so many Americans have cell phones that can take photos and video, the chances are much greater that any major news incident will be recorded and reported in some way.

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  • http://markmastersmasonry.com jakeberglund

    “Citizens can handle the what, while professional journalists can handle the why…” and the media source paying the professional journalist handles the spin.