Citizen Journalism: The Cons

Citizen Journalism:

The collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the internet.

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According to Mashable.com:

"The concept of citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic", "guerrilla" or "street" journalism) is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists. Collaborative journalism is also a separate concept and is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of both citizen media and user generated content."

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The images above provide a stark contrast of two different approaches to gathering news information.

One method takes longer, while the other is almost instantaneous.

Both could be misleading, but only one goes through minimal editing, fact checking, and general feedback.

Citizen journalism has its merits, but it also has its hinderances. It possesses a rushed but very up to date feel.

That characteristic can help a reader feel like they are really there as something is happening, like they aren't missing anything.

While that has value, most journalists know that there's almost always more to a story than meets the eye. Without digging, without interviews and many reactions it's difficult to grasp the scope of what is happening. It's hard to even know what the story is sometimes.

Mark Glasner writes in a Sept. 27, 2006 article for PBS Media Shift:

The New West website has chosen to use the term “Unfiltered” for its citizen journalism contributions, and runs the following instructions for people to contribute: “Don’t let the ‘citizen journalism’ title scare you. Your post doesn’t have to be a structured article. It can be a rant, a rave, a rhyme, a short comment, a novel — anything you feel like writing. We just want to hear what’s on your mind.”

Unfiltered can be powerful, but also dangerous.

Without context a story can look very different and it's difficult to undo first impressions of a story.

Citizen journalism lacks context, and often that context is important.

Context ties into journalistic ethics. Just because you can 'sell' a story to look and sound a certain way, does that mean you should? Does that make it accurate?

There is plenty of spin in the media at the professional level, trying to cut through that kind of noise exponentially with citizen journalists seems next to impossible.

There is certainly a place for citizen journalism as the table, but it will never take over the place already reserved for traditional professional journalism.