“Quality” citizen journalism
Steve Outing writes a how-to on how to elicit quality content from the public in his column Stop the Presses. The most interesting suggestion, I think, is to integrate community contributed content with staff content. He argues that when newspaper sites segregate reader generated content from staff content, would-be citizen journalists resent it. He writes, “This approach of treating community contributors as “second-class citizens” perhaps breeds inferior content by discouraging those who would produce some of the best citizen content from participating.” He also questions whether newspapers should offer training to citizen journalists. Is this condescending? He says some people don’t WANT to be journalists. (He also states his discomfort with the term “citizen journalists.”)
- Robin
