The popular video Web site YouTube recently launched an innovative news channel to promote citizen journalism called Citizen News. http://www.youtube.com/citizennews.Olivia Ma is the site’s news editor. Already more than 350 users have subscribed to Citizen News. This only suggests that citizen journalism is here to stay.
So many citizen journalism initiatives are cropping up, here are some of the more ambitious citizen’s media efforts that have launched or are in the works. http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002226.php
In recent times many news websites owned and operated by citizens who may or may not have professional experience as a journalist have emerged. These are comprised entirely or nearly entirely of contributions from the citizens. Most such sites focus on local news, gossips and opinions. The site’s editors monitor and perform a modest degree of editing to submissions, in order to maintain some degree of “editorial integrity” of content.
South Korean site OhmyNews is an example of news organization that combines citizen journalism with the work of professionals.It has recruited, to date, some 38,000 “citizen reporters,” who contribute articles for review by OhmyNews’ editorial staff. A small team of professional reporters also create content for the site. Citizen reports account for about 70 percent of the site’s content, and pro reporters create the rest, so the emphasis clearly is on the citizen.Not everything submitted by the citizen reporters is accepted for publication on OhmyNews. And some of the contributors who submit quality content are paid modest fees for their writing and/or photography.
This approach appears to be potentially profitable. OhmyNews, which is five years old, says that it made about US$400,000 in 2004, two-thirds of which from advertising. While it started out as a Korean media venture, the company has created an international edition and recruits citizen journalists from around the world to participate. It’s possible that OhmyNews represents a new kind of media organization that will rival traditional “pro-only” news outlets.
Yet another example of CJ is the WikiNews site, a spinoff of the famed Wikipedia public encyclopedia, which allows anyone to write and post a news story, and anyone to edit any story that’s been posted. It’s an experimental concept operating on the theory that the knowledge and intelligence of the group can produce credible, well-balanced news accounts.The jury is still out on whether or not WikiNews will work, but the wiki model does seem to succeed with Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia is now one of the top information sources on the Web, and its entries are, for the most part, accurate and useful. WikiNews, at this writing, is a less compelling service.
Traditional news organizations are unlikely to copy WikiNews, but the wiki concept might be useful to them in certain situations. For example, an obituary might work as a wiki. A family member might write the initial article, then friends and family add remembrances, photos, etc. The big worry that editors have about wikis is that people will use it inappropriately, and while that’s certainly possible, the experience at Wikipedia would seem to indicate that that’s unlikely. In the case of an obituary, a family member likely would monitor what people add, removing anything inappropriate.
Many newspapers and news channels today have their online presence the reason is to have interaction with the readers and viewers. Articles and capsules are open for user comments. This offer the opportunity for readers to react to, criticize, praise or add to what’s published by professional journalists. That’s not it reporters have also started to maintain their personal blogs. Here they share their personal opinion on issues and welcome comments from the readers as well.
Citizen journalism websites is at a nascent stage in India. www.merinews.com, www.mynews.in, www.streetanchor.com, www.whitedrums.com to name a few report on issues like politics, environmental problems, social problems, science, and health topics, etc.
CJ has been welcomed by the mainstream news channels in India with both arms. News channels have even allotted half hour show to broadcast videos and photographs sent by the viewers. Such programmes provide a stage for citizen-journalists around the country to conceive, document and present a story of social and political relevance on national television.
CNN-IBN joined hands with IDEA Cellular to start a CJ initiative. That’s not it; CNN-IBN went a step further and awarded some of the citizen journalist.
CJ in other words is alternative journalism. Media in India has always been mainstream. With globalization, newspapers became like any other consumer product. So that news that mattered to the consumers with disposable income made headlines while issues concerning the farmers took a back seat. Thanks to blogs, just about anyone can become a publisher.
CJ is new to India and professionals are still grappling with its theoretical and practical framework.
There are quite a few initiatives that are being experimented to listen to citizens and talk to them about them so that it helps them better their lives. Example: ‘MYOWN’ to train women panchayat leaders in Bihar, one of the most backward states of India to talk about their issues and assist them in publishing a video blog so that their concerns are highlighted.
CJ has been part of journalism since the inception of newspapers in the form of reader’s comments or telephone calls into the running broadcasting.
However the CJ movement emerged when journalists themselves began to question the predictability of their coverage of such events as the 1988 U.S. presidential election. Those journalists became part of the public, or civic, journalism movement, a countermeasure against the eroding trust in the news media and widespread public disillusionment with politics and civic affairs.
But it’s the advent of technologies that gave birth to a new form of this movement.Communication changed greatly with the advent of the Internet. The Internet enabled citizens to contribute to journalism, without professional training.
The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media.What has changed, however, is that with today’s technology, the average person can capture news and distribute it globally.
There are different categories of citizen journalist. Broadly speaking, they can be categorized as: those who owns a digital camera or a camera phone and sends shootings to a news organisation during a major event (tsunami, London bombing…) or a local car accident, those who want cover its local or virtual community and produce targeted content, those who have agendas or propaganda, those who are eager to participate to a conversation with professional journalists and bloggers.
This leads us to the fundamental issue ie ethics of journalism. With no professional journalism traning citizen journalists are bound to be unaware of code of ethics that journalism stands on. Miss use of freedom of expression, bloggers who claim to be citizen journalists have been using this platform to propagate political agendas. Facts checking are yet another matter of concern since anyone and everyone is a reporter. Therefore news without cross check are on public display, thereby miss leading the readers or viewers.
Is CJ something that’s going to be essential to the future prosperity of news companies? Yes, citizen journalism is here to stay; after all, news organization cannot work in isolation. Two way communication is essential for the future of news. CJ has also helped improve the quality of news that is dissimilated by journalists. Journalists are therefore on guard and need to be one level above the ordinary citizens. However, expert journalism will shape up the future of news around the world.
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