CitJ Clubs: Sounds Cool to Me!

Right now I'm at the Denver International Airport, waiting with my friend and fellow blogger/podcaster Koan Bremner for a flight to San Jose so we can attend the inaugural BlogHer conference for female bloggers.

So this is just a quick note to follow up on something that Wes Thorp mentioned in his Daily Grit blog yesterday. See his post: "Citizen Journalism: The Next Steps." There, he writes:

"We have troves of motivated citizens in the area who could and maybe would cover the issues of the day, like city council and township board meetings, stuff local media used to cover. 

"Gahran talks at length about how to train average citizens for this kind of duty.  Is it time?  Is it time to have a Meet-Up in our area to talk about citizen journalism and give it a whirl?"

Oh, that gets my gears going...

I'd love to see local citizen journalism clubs sprining up all over the place. Such clubs could be a major resource for citizen journalists, and their audiences.

I checked Meetup.com quickly yesterday and didn't see any such clubs.

The main reason I'd love to see this is that I realize that journalism isn't necessarily intuitive, and every citizen journalist brings to the table a unique perspective, areas of expertise, and skills. In local clubs, citizen journalists could share resources and teach each other a great deal. They also could collaborate on team reporting projects.

There's no reason why citizen journalists have to work alone. In fact, if you're just starting out, working alone may be rather daunting.

I'd love for I, Reporter to play a role in helping people form or find local clubs. If you're interested in this, how do you think I, Reporter might help? Please comment below.