Citizen & Mainstream Journalists: Better Together?

(UPDATE JAN 16: Via Poynter's E-Media Tidbits weblog, journalist Miranda Spencer offered some good examples of the kind of collaboration I'm discussion in this article. See: "Miranda Spencer: Pro/Citizen Journalism Collaboration Works.")

Adam and I have been considering this for a while: Why not find ways to put citizen journalists' energy to good use creating popular but resource-intensive types of content that papers love to run but can rarely afford staff time for? Stuff like long-form, in-depth, narrative journalism, for instance,

This week, the popular Denver-area free weekly paper Westword ran a poignant column about the value of long-form narrative journalism. See "The dailies are looking for characters," by Michael Roberts. Here's what intrigued me about that piece...
 

Roberts' article says,

"Rocky Mountain News editor/publisher/president John Temple echoes many of [Denver Post editor] Moore's views, particularly when it comes to finding scribes with the chops for narrative journalism. 'Long-form writing is something that most journalists are not trained for or skilled at,' he says. 'Some people are incredible reporters but weaker writers, and some are great storytellers but not great hard-news beat reporters.''"

On Friday in Journalism Hope, blogger K Paul Mallasch expands the issues raised in the Westword article in an intriguing direction. See "Why There Isn't More Narrative Journalism in Newspapers and how CitJ can Help." There, he wrote:

"I immediately thought about how citizen journalism could possibly help with the lack of immersion journalism and/or literary journalism in the world today. ...With citizen journalists covering something that interests them and a little help from trained journalists, these types of stories could be done, and done well online. You need a big enough audience contributing, though, because one person can't do it alone month after month without compensation. (There's that compensation thing again...) The community, the voice of the people, could pick out what warrants a look at and take the time to do the stories."

...OK, I know, it's a bit pie-in-the-sky, and there's that ever-present signal-to-noise issue to contend with regarding any kind of contributed content, but still I think he's onto something worth considering. Citizen journalists could collaborate with, or otherwise aid, mainstream journalists for more difficult projects.

For instance:

For an in-depth series where many personal stories will be told in the course of exploring a larger issue, citizen journalists could help identify appropriate interview subjects, and perhaps even do some interviews or take some photos. They could also do some of the background research necessary to put such stories into context. In this sense, they'd be volunteer "reporter's assistants" -- forgoing compensation in order to get valuable training and a chance to help create some news content that's compelling on a basic human level.

Or: A paper could hold a contest for citizen journalists to provide shorter narrative pieces. The paper could highlight some exemplary professionally produced stories of that type, for guidance, and then see what the citizen journalists turn up. The winning entries would be featured in the print edition, receive a cash or other prize, or both. The winners could then be mentored and encouraged by staff to provide more high-quality content over the long term, or coach other citizen journalists.

I mean, if we're not going to pay citizen journalists (and most news organizations won't), the least we can do is offer them encouragement and guidance. Treat them like a welcome part of the journalism community. Focus on what they can bring to the table, and how that can help news organizations. Leverage their unique strengths.

Ultimately, I don't think we need to always have Berlin Wall separating citizen journalists from the newsroom staff. In some cases, if collaboration is more likely to produce compelling in-depth content, why not let them work together, even just as an experiment?

Worth a try, I think.