I, Reporter

BlogHer: Birds of a Feather Flock Here

Here at Blogher, my Birds of a Feather session on citizen journalism just wrapped up. It was a whole lot of fun -- altogether about 20 people dropped by. It's was a lively and diverse discussion, and I learned a lot.

...Too much, in fact, to recount here. I'm currently in another session (Advanced Blogging Tools) and I really want to pay attention.

Anyway, here's the upshot of that information citJ meetup...

CitJ at BlogHer

So here I am at the inaugural BlogHer conference, sipping tea and waiting for the first session to begin. So far, it's great.

One of the activities at BlogHer today is Birds of a Feather: informal gatherings of various interest groups that will occur during the day. Participants can create a sign-up sheet for their own topical group, and I created one on citizen journalism. Now (about 20 min. later) nearly 20 people have signed up! That's pretty cool...

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...

CitJ on KGNU tomorrow

Tomorrow evening, at approximately 9:30 pm MDT, community radio station KGNU (Boulder, CO) will air an episode of The Western Front featuring a segment on citizen journalism. Host Joe King interviewed me earlier today for this segment, and I think it went very well.

LISTEN NOW to a sneak preview! (Right-click or click and hold to download that MP3 audio clip directly. It's 396 KB and runs just under two minutes.)

If that clip intrigues you, here's how you can catch the whole show...

Check in to Podcast Hotel

Another cool happening coming up in early September in Portland, OR, is The Podcast Hotel -- which its organizers say is for those "racing to embrace podcasting in particular and the mass amateurization of content creation in general."

Behind the effort are a pair of new media meisters, including Vin Crosbie, an online innovator who I've met at regular New York gatherings of the Online News Association. Vin and partner Robert Cauthorn, ex of S.F. Chronicle digital media, have a new blog, Rebuilding Media, worth checking out too.

State Informer: A CitJ Blog for Every State

I just learned today of an interesting new citJ site: State Informer, a project by Tom Simpson. It features 51 blogs -- one for each US state and Washington DC.

Registered members can post citizen journalism items to the blog for their state. So far there's not much there, but it's only just been launched. I'll watch its evolution.

Media Summit Discount

Some smart folks who used to put together top-drawer content and media & business conferences for Forbes Magazine, are mounting a media & blogging summit in New York in October -- and "I, Reporter" fans can go at a discount! On the program are bloggers Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan. And I, for one, plan on being there. Here's how to find out more, and get $100 off to attend...

TIP: Quoting from a Conversation (Audio)

Learning how and when to "put on your journalist hat" can be very tricky, especially for people who are new to the practice of journalism.

Citizen journalists function as both ordinary people and as journalists. Sometime the line gets blurry. For instance, imagine you just had an ordinary conversation with someone who's involved in an issue you wish to cover. What if you forgot to tell them you were also acting as a reporter during that discussion -- or if you only realized after the conversation that you just heard something worth reporting?

That's a very common and potentially risky situation. Here's my take on how you can handle it...

LISTEN NOW! Click that link to listen to or download the MP3 audio file (podcast). It's about 1.1 MB and runs just under five minutes long.

On the BackFence

One up-and-running citizen journalism effort is  Backfence, which has launched two sites in suburban Washington, D.C., and has plans to launch more in a national rollout over the next few years. Here's a really interesting interview with the two principals, Mark Potts and Susan DeFife, in the latest American Journalism Review. One intriguing aspect is how these citizen journalist moguls-in-the-making view existing mass media -- will they partner with them or not? ...

London Blogging

The London bombings were a good example of how citizen journalists can expand an important story well beyond what the traditional media can do on it's own. The NY Times had a good overview of how blogs provided images and news from the scene, plus a quote from Bayosphere's Dan Gillmor.


Here's what the Times writes...