The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism has been haunting newsrooms since Dan Gillmor wrote We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People in 2004. Suddenly, for Gillmor epigone and imitators, there was a new hero, the citizen journalist, struggling against a bad guy called the traditional journalist.

In fact a very bad guy this old journo: outdated, working for a mainstream media – disgusting, isn’t it ? -, linked to corporate interests, limited by the newsroom horizon, not very well connected (nor well educated) and with no knowledge of what can interest average people! Moreover, truth and accuracy were no longer his cup of tea…

On the contrary, the citizen journalist had so many qualities: as a newcomer, he was young, fresh, innocent, independent, with a lot of new ideas on journalism and democracy and on top of that a real love of truth.

We'll look at how news organizations can employ the citizen-journalism concept, and we'll approach it by looking at the different levels or layers available. Citizen journalism isn't one simple concept that can be applied universally by all news organizations. It's much more complex, with many potential variations. So now lets see what these phases are:

1. Opening up to public comment: At its simplest level, user comments offer the opportunity for readers to react to, criticize, praise or add to what's published by professional journalists.
2. The citizen add-on reporter: A small step up the ladder is to recruit citizen add-on contributions for stories written by professional journalists. I mean more than just adding a "User Comments" link. I mean that with selected stories, solicit information and experiences from members of the public, and add them to the main story to enhance it.
3. Open-source reporting: The term generally is understood to mean a collaboration between a professional journalist and his/her readers on a story, where readers who are knowledgeable on the topic are asked to contribute their expertise, ask questions to provide guidance to the reporter, or even do actual reporting which will be included in the final journalistic product.
4. The citizen bloghouse: A great way to get citizens involved in a news Web site is to simply invite them to blog for it. A number of news sites do this now, and some citizen blogs are consistently interesting reads.
5. Newsroom citizen 'transparency' blogs: A specific type of citizen blog deserves its own category here. It plays on the notion of news organization "transparency," or sharing the inner workings of the newsroom with readers or viewers. This involves inviting a reader or readers to blog with public complaints, criticism, or praise for the news organization's ongoing work. A reader panel can be empowered via a publicly accessible blog to serve as citizen ombudsmen, of a sort, offering public commentary on how the news organization is performing.
6. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version: The next step involves establishing a stand-alone citizen-journalism Web site that is separate from the core news brand. It means establishing a news-oriented Web site that is comprised entirely or nearly entirely of contributions from the community.
7. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version: This model is identical to No. 6 above, except that citizen submissions are not edited. What people write goes on the site: blemishes, misspellings and all.
8. Add a print edition: For this model, take either No. 6 or No. 7 above (stand-alone citizen-journalism Web site, either with edited submissions or a hands-off editing approach) and add a print edition. A number of newspapers have tried this, using a print edition distributed freely once a week as an insert into a traditional daily or weekly paper, or as a stand-alone print product delivered to people's doorsteps and/or delivered to local retailers and placed in news boxes for consumers to pick up.
9. The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism: The next step up the ladder creates a news organization that combines citizen journalism with the work of professionals.
10. Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof: This is slightly different than No. 9, above, because on any one page there will be a mix of professionally written (paid) and citizen-submitted (free) content -- labeled appropriately so that the reader knows what he/she is getting -- rather than the more typical walling-off of citizen content as a way of differentiating it from the work of professionals.
11. Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors: Finally, in the "way out there" category, comes wiki news. The most well known example is the WikiNews site, a spinoff of the famed Wikipedia public encyclopedia, which allows anyone to write and post a news story, and anyone to edit any story that's been posted. It's an experimental concept operating on the theory that the knowledge and intelligence of the group can produce credible, well-balanced news accounts.

These are certain things you must know about Citizen Journalism and how to approach it. I you can, please tell me more.