December 17, 2004, 8.11am • 15 comments » • 889 Views

Timely recap: What is citizen journalism?

Web-centric circularity, or double plagarism? Let me restate JD Lasica’s identification of the definition of “citizen journalism” in Wikipedia:-

Citizen journalism, also known as “participatory journalism” is the act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,” according to the seminal report, We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. They say, “The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”

Too bad Wikinews isn’t up to scratch on this front yet.

There’s been much hyperbole about how Wikinews will really catch the citizen journalism wave and usher in a new era of open news writing. So far, it’s been disappointing, containing a mish-mash of wire reportage, subbed just far enough to make the language often illegible. The current top two stories are not news stories at all, but backgrounders and timelines.

Jon Dube at Cyberjournalist says:-

However, Wikinews might have more potential as a space for nonjournalists to collaborate on original enterprise or investigative pieces. Imagine, for a moment, if Wikinews had been around when the CBS National Guard documents controversy had erupted. Rather than the story slowly spreading from blog to blog (or in addition to), a site like Wikinews might provide a central place for everyone to collaborate on investigating the documents, uploading relevant materials and continually advancing the story.

It sounds neater and tidier, but I tend to feel the way the way Rathergate blew up owed a lot to the ego of bloggers on that particular crusade - they were happy for their information to fit with the broader emerging jigsaw, but just as happy for that to go on their blog, their own personal publishing space, to gain their own time in the spotlight before it was moved on. You’d have to be very altruistic to work so benevolently in a collaborative news model like this, and I don’t think bloggers are that altruistic.