Your opinion as a citizen journalist

My opinion is not for sale and I don't have  a price as I am comfortable where I'm at in my life.

Our belief system is a sum of our life experiences and in that we all differ unless we have been part of some mass indoctrination regime.  Most of us here haven't.

For interest here is Wikepedia's  definition of Citizen Journalism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Thanks.

I think that Citizen Journalist will be forced to program and administrate their own Citizen Journalist Sites that are owned by all the members themselves. This is happening I myself, happen to be in the middle of writing community software. But some are up and running and being trialed and developed already. One I will be using in unison with this site as all I am doing is hedging my bets so to speak, new sites take a time to become popular?  This is why Citizen Journalist should swap email addresses, many have already I personal have loads.

But its early days and whats happened now is many of us are watching for changes that shoe political intrusion heavy to the right wing. 

Good Food for thought ACP.  I know as an artist too I was told to not make a living at it for I would lose my "wellspring of creativity".  What a novel idea in our 'keeping up with the Joneses world"................YankeeJim also suggested the same thing..get to the basic reason you wanted to do art to begin with. The academic world can really screw one up as an artist...for a while...

I think NP got where it was too for the right reasons originally and then the "Devil" shows one the mountain top."   You can have all this for this.  MT may have been forced for reasons that are none of our business. 

They can still pop up and are I am sure...citizen journalism.

I'm a little surprised by your content. Normally you don't use disjointed sentences and bad grammar. While I may agree with the opinion expressed, it's difficult to read. You may want to run it through MS Word's editor, with options that it checks for EVERYTHING from spelling to fragmented sentences to verb usage, to repeated words.

It won't catch mistakes like this : ..... and debate and give opinions. Tells an interesting tale,...

so you'll have to re-read it to catch those.

I haven't been here long enough to know everyones reason for joining NowPublic.  As far as I know, at least in m case, I was not introduced to the owners when I first joined here.  I found out about the staff and owners as I went along.

As far as I know I wasn't vetted either.  I found fellow writers and Staff and Guest Editors very helpful to send me on my way to enjoy this venture.

I understand when people want to hedge their bets.  Our stories and comments are our investment on this site.  The owners had to make business decisions and that involves real money.

I can understand that some people may feel cheated because they weren't consulted, but reality is that in all likelihood nothing would have changed as far as a business decision is concerned.

Since the announcement, I really haven't seen any changes that negatively affected the site, except for the examiner ads and pesty pop ups.  Pop ups can be controlled by the browser.

I will wait and see what happens in the future before I jump to conclusions.

Based on two previous articles and this one, I think the owners know how the writers feel.  Michael Tippett is to send us all an e-mail in the near future, hopefully it will address the points that were raised here and the way forward.

By our nature we are all free spirits and we will decide what we feel is best for us. 

We all have friends on this site on both sides of the political spectrum that we enjoy debating and exchanging ideas with.

I would be disappointed if this family on nowpublic fell apart over ownership.  I think we're  all bigger than that.

That is all I'm going to say about this subject.

Well I thought about emailing it instead, but hey, you're a big boy babel-fish, you can take a little heat. I'm sorry, but that kind of stuff is just a pet peeve of mine. I'm sure it comes from getting all A's in English and writing classes, both in High School AND college. And no I don't work for NP. I do however, write for a living and having followed many of your articles, and it just surprised me that this one read as it did. Normally your articles are more polished grammatically.

And yes I did take into consideration where you live.

Personally I think that Citizen Journalism is evolving into something different from what was first quoted. This, as we all know, happens a lot.

We still have to look at the net itself as a baby, for that is what it is - only a few short years ago we could never have communicated like this. We also have to look at things such as blogs, Twitter, Social websites - it has - with one great flourish - changed all our lives. How many younger people do you speak to know that there was never an internet? 

With Citizen Journalism you get a real feel for the 'dirty'. It is what we, as citizens, feel - and we will express it how we see fit.

If we get a few dollars for doing so, is there really anything wrong in that? If, on the other hand, we are told that we have to have a certain opinion and are then to express that - that is mainstream journalism. Or what is know as mainstream these days.

ACP - many of us are taking the wait and see approach, which is fair enough.

But if we don't speak up now, it may be too late after it is a done deal, and then the NP family may be destroyed. It is dear to my heart too, that is why I have chosen to put myself on the line.

They kept us quiet up to now because they said nothing was going to change. Then they start changing it around before emailing us, to warn us at least. That speaks volumes. I don't like the bulldozer approach.

I am now on my third cup of coffee, it helps my think and mull things over.

What if?

Why did the big boys buy Nowpublic, they all ready have a foot hold in the US and Canada.

What don't the have? 

A easy avenue to expand out into the world and what does NP have well members living across the globe.

So of course NP will be the world examiner or be raided for its talent overseas, as well as changing it political balance possibly.

Now if I was in that business and I see an avenue to make more money and expand the their form of paid amateur free lance journalism (cheap labor). I would be looking at raiding the NP talent overseas in the most cost effective way. Then sell off NP

Meanwhile I would run competitions such as writing and photo ones where profit can be made from the entrance fees with exotic prizes. Possibly link to my own casino and gambling sites etc.