Is Citizen Journalism A gigantic Blog?

The new  journalism wave of citizen, crowds, bloggers etc, disturbs the conventional institutional journalism to a point that most well know newspapers introduce in their daily menu ‘bloggers’ acting with a more personal touch, perhaps not so journalistic. 
 Here are a few exemples of such sites,

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  On the other hand there is the original ‘citizen journalism’ where non-trained people, like myself, with no experience whatever make news. Is it possible? Well as the man on the spot, where newsworthy events occurs, if he know how to written and he has an Internet connection and is a member of a participatory site he can immediately upload his news and be published on the fly. Is it lesser news because his professional editors let him upload whatever interest him, doing only some kind of ethical filtering. Or is creditability  possible, if and only if  a Real Pro Journalist and a Real Newspaper does the publishing. I would dare to say that this not the case. 

For look at the Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential race where professional reporters ‘record’ the news. Here is an example from the November 30, 2007 found on Watchblog . 

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Washington Post Reports the News? see here.
I quote..”Everybody tells me that the Washington Post is a great newspaper. It has some of the best reporters. It reports all the important news. But what do they call news? And how do they report it? Is rumor news? Is it proper to report a known falsehood as news?”…”In an article titled ” Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors about Him” Peny Bacon “reported” :Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.  Since when are “rumors and emails circulating on the Internet” news? I was under the impression that reporters report facts.”….(The original Washington Post  article is  here.) 

 In one of the 19 accompanign comments I found this..”The news media reports news. News may correlate with truth, but it is not truth. Those of us more to the right of you have long understood this. You should not let this minor and relatively indirect attack on Obama bother you. We get it all the time in the media.”…see here. So where are the creditability the facts and the truth?

  In opposition to the above intrigues and complaints, I, the ’inexperienced citizen journalist’ bear no  burden of  global, national or local interests that are constraining the big newspapers. My view is perhaps more direct naive and personal.  If I wants to do real work with a clear voice I should  be careful not to fall into pseudo-journalism as described here,  I quote..”Letter-to-the-Editor are as much journalism as a man’s video of his kid’s wedding is cinema. Or as much as a woman putting a Band-Aid (or ‘plaster’ the British would say) onto her kid’s bruised knee is practicing medicine. Or as much as a guy appearing in traffic court to dispute a parking ticket is practicing law. It’s too much of a rhetoric stretch.”…see here.

  But I already know that the big newspapers blogs sites are not far away. Look at the ‘Ten Commandment’ of Blogrunner (the blog site of the New York Times), I quote..  
 ..”Dig into the web and expose which stories are developing now. Fully integrate blogs and media Highlight the connections between the various agents –bloggers or media- that report or relay or annotate these stories”.. ..”Identify these agents. Use the connections between distributed news fragments to provide context and perspective. Highlight individual voices and expertise. Connect these voices”.. ..”Aggregate expert voices horizontally across categories. Provide perspective. Juxtapose news stories with views about these stories. Saturation coverage: Provide in a single view a snapshot of all major players –bloggers, media organizations– in this conversation – include all resources that are cited.”..
Provide an archive of past moments in the blogosphere, connect current stories to older stories
Stir; shake; serve.”..see more here.

  So the New York Times has aproved  the above objectives by integrating ‘blogs and news’, and that is what I try to do. The technology is here and the really interested people will stay on the track.

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