You wouldn't sit in a dentist's chair and have a root canal done by a citizen dentist. You wouldn't undergo a gall bladder operation by a citizen surgeon. But to read the newspaper of the future in print or online or both, it's at least possible you'll have to read stories by citizen journalists ... like it or not.
The reason is simple. Newspapers across America have become so decimated by staff cutbacks that citizen journalists ... let's call them CJs ... will have to step in to fill the gap in covering the news in print and on the web site, if the gap is to be filled.
"The newspapers that survive will be the ones that make the most of the benefits of the online world," says Derek Clark, who runs the GeekPolitics web site that comments on public affairs and media issues. "Citizen journalism can in many cases provide free content and the internet provides the ability to reach a much larger audience. The old media that combine their resources with the advantages of new media will thrive. The old media that try to cling to their old methods of doing things will die."
While the rise of CJs has caused a flurry of excitement and discussion in the journalistic community, there have been precursors for many years. Papers have always relied on what they used to call "stringers" to call in tidbits such as high school basketball scores or news from small-scale events the paper doesn't staff, or using man/woman on the street responses to a set question, or birth and wedding announcements. Via syndicates, papers have also run features by nonjournalists such as doctors with Q&A medical columns or mechanics with Q&A automobile columns.
In a broader sense, this also fits in with the American strain of do-it-yourselfing ... that you can do anything you want, or at least try. Thus we have citizen painters of the living room, citizen auto oil changers, citizen builders of cabins in the woods, citizen soldiers in times of war, citizen just about everything.
In communications, the citizen participation craze is at an all-time high as citizens determine the contestants' fate on "American Idol" ... rate destinations on travel sites and people's homes for sale on real estate sites ... become part of an assemblage of amateur restaurant critics in the popular Zagat guides, thus supplanting the once all-powerful professional restaurant critic at a metro newspaper ... and most notably take part in the largest mass editorial participation ever on the Internet with the compilation of the Wiki encyclopedia, or Wikipedia.
So the scope is broad. The immediate question for us here is whether this crop of CJs will replace, not supplement, regular reporters ... and whether their work can be presentable without editing by regular staff or a syndicate.
And in discussing citizen journalists, we must distinguish them from bloggers. Bloggers produce opinions .. usually with no thought, research or personal knowledge of what they're writing about. CJs in the ideal sense would report stories with facts they turn up from being at an event or talking with knowledgable sources.ãEUREUR
On the plus side, CJs can broaden out the base of a paper, extend its reach.
"Probably some events get reported by citizen journalists that would not be reported without them," says David Weaver, a journalism professor at Indiana University. "Reporters can't be everywhere and cannot know about all events taking place in their communities. In that sense, citizen journalism may help to broaden the kind of events that are reported."
On the other hand, it almost seems the more trivial and mundane the subject, the more appropriate it is for a CJ, and the more important it is, the less appropriate.
Adam Stone is the publisher of the Examiner community newspapers in Putnam and Westchester counties, N.Y. ... just the type of publication you'd think would welcome CJs. But no.
"I don't think citizen journalism should dominate or even play a minor role in the operation of mainstream newspapers," he says. "I'm sure there is a place for it ... a valuable place ... in alternative media. I think it's been the mainstream newspaper industry's embrace of new editorial formulas and approaches that has been leading to its demise (although) my opinion runs contrary to what most inside and outside the industry believe."
Stone says the most relevant place for CJs in a traditional paper is what it's always been ... "the letters to the editor section."
Indiana's Prof. Weaver doesn't even think citizen journalists should be the correct term ... "citizen communicators" would be better because "without the training and education that most journalists have, most citizens cannot qualify as journalists." He thinks CJs, or CCs, "are best at reporting breaking events, and not likely to be very helpful for in-depth, analytical or investigative reporting."
Dr. Kirsten Johnson, assistant professor, Department of Communications, Elizabethtown College, Pa., has authored several papers on citizen journalism, and is currently writing a book chapter on the subject.
"Local newspapers should not rely on citizen journalists to help them survive," she says. "Most citizen journalists are not paid anything for their work and lack the motivation to help a for-profit entity continue to make a profit. Citizens cannot and should not be viewed as free labor."
Here's a look at three recent experiments by sizable metro papers with citizen journalism.
WASHINGTON TIMES -- This scrappy paper, which barely hangs on in its battle with the larger and much more prosperous Washington Post, has become probably the nation's foremost print user of citizen journalism in large metropolitan areas. In April, it launched a full, themed page strictly by CJs in its local section six days a week. Monday, the theme is academia; Tuesday, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs; Wednesday, D.C.; Thursday, local military bases; Friday, religious communities; and Sunday, charity and public service news.
HARTFORD COURANT -- This paper calls its project iTowns and offers a well-designed page with a roster of 73 towns in the area. Click on the town you want and you'll find its news with a section called iTowns Local ... reader submitted headlines.
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT of NORFOLK -- This was a failure. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's latest State of the Media Report, the paper launched a citizen media effort called Co-Pilot that ran three times a week with community news in print and online. It even sent an editor to Spain to study similar projects there.
After a nine-month struggle, the paper pulled the plug in March 2008. Pew quoted editor Dennis Finlay as saying, "Mostly we discovered it is not the savior we thought. It was very difficult to get quality reader-produced content." As for the general base of readers, Finlay said, "nobody cared when we got rid of it."
To do a good job with CJs, a paper would have to 1) find them, 2) give them some training or assess their initial efforts, 3) get them to do stuff for free when the paper needs it, and 4) edit what they do. It might cost money to accomplish all this. Yet not spending any money is the reason why some editors are enamored with the thought of CJs.
Some thoughts ...
IT CAN BE DONE. The Washington Times and Hartford Courant show it can be. Like anything else, a paper would have to make at least a bit of an effort and devote a staffer's time to oversee the CJs.
"Newspapers could hold regular citizen journalism training sessions at the newspaper every month that could focus on newsgathering techniques and media ethics," says Larry Atkins, adjunct professor of journalism in Arcadia University's English, Communications and Theatre Department. "They also could post a podcast or video presentation on their web site giving reporting tips and ethical advice. Have a newspaper staff member regularly monitor the citizen journalism submissions much like a newspaper message board to keep an eye out for content that might appear biased, dishonest, false, defamatory or otherwise objectionable."
If newspapers use their imaginations, there's no limit on the interesting, informative material they could add.
LEARN FROM TV. We come right back to Prof. Atkins: "Local newspapers could take advantage of citizen journalism much like the manner in which cable television outlets like CNN have used I-Reports. Newspapers could encourage citizen journalists to send photos and write first-person accounts of their experiences in observing a news event. For instance, people who attend a local July 4 parade could send photos, video and written impressions to be posted on the newspaper web site. If there are over 50 local July 4 parades in a metropolitan area, one reporter can't get to all of them. Through citizen journalism I-Reports, a newspaper could post information about most, if not all, of those parades."
In short, he says, "citizen journalism can help local newspapers survive by making them a more interactive product. Readers who post comments, articles and photos on their local newspaper's web site might feel a stronger connection to the paper and be more likely to read the print version and the online version of the paper."
HAVE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE. Instead of viewing CJs as a necessary evil or even as a burden, why couldn't papers view them in a positive light and help themselves become more qualified, more expert? Why not tap into experts in the community and create an array of citizen journalists who are authoritative?
For instance, many papers used to have a medical writer to do stories on that specialty and nothing other. That's gone the way of the do-do bird. Instead, why not develop a given medical topic and invite comments from medical professionals in the area, perhaps working through the local medical association? This way, they would be 1) providing more expert material than they could provide themselves, and 2) would bring in the types of people who normally don't participate in the journalistic process.
Or try a roundup of comments on a legal topic through the local bar association, or an architectural topic from architects, an interior design topic from designers, and so on. Many experts are pleased to communicate with the public and anxious to try new forms of doing so online.
MAKE THEM CREDIBLE. With citizen journalism reports, "it makes you think, how do we judge these people?" says Peter Shankman, a speaker, author and futuristic consultant who runs the e-mail alert Help a Reporter Out hotline. As a staff writer, a reporter is essentially certified by the paper as being skilled and trustworthy. How can you do that with CJs?
Shankman's answer: through a rating system. Just as users compile quality ratings of eBay sellers or restaurants in online reviews, if there's a regular part of the paper with ongoing stories from a crew of CJs, readers could rate the stories and the writers themselves, giving them an incentive to do their best.