I, Reporter

Paley Panel Prompts Discussion on Way Forward for CitJ

By Adam Glenn

Last night’s Paley Center panel on citizen journalism was a great give-and-take between panelists ranging from practicing citJers to former network news chiefs, and an audience of well over 100 and full of questions.

For my part, I made the case that media and news organizations, in order to take full advantage of the power of the Internet, must focus attention on the potential for citizen journalism. There’s proof enough of that in the growing number of citizen media sites – I,Reporter has identified more than 500 of them for the KCNN.org citmedia directory, while Placeblogger.com has ID’d more than 2,100 similar placeblog sites – and the fact they’re of such a remarkably wide variety in terms of who contributes to them, what type of content they post and their geographic scales. Panel moderator Merrill Brown put it this way, “Citizen journalism is not an outpost.”

Backfence Backpedals: Lessons Learned

(NOTE: I originally published this article on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits blog. I'm republishing it here, slightly re-edited.)

Last week, Backfence (which runs a high-profile family of hyperlocal citizen-media sites) announced a substantial retrenchment. CEO and co-founder Susan DeFife resigned, citing differences with the company's board of directors. Also, 12 of 18 employees were laid off.

Ouch! This news has spawned much thoughtful discussion and interpretation. For instance, see the comment thread from this Local Onliner post.

Search Engine Watch noted: "This is an unfortunate setback, given the company's growth over the last 18 months from its original D.C. area community sites, to its west coast expansion and many Bay Area site launches (it now totals 13 sites in D.C., Chicago and Bay Area). ...Its apparent cash flow problems and layoffs could be telling, and a more sustainable hyperlocal strategy could be in an aggregation model like that of the newly launched Placeblogger. Time will tell if this is the case."

Yes indeed -- finding a sustainable way to financially support local news content is a thorny issue. Personally, I don't think conventional advertising can continue to shoulder most of that burden, in any media.

So how can you build a sustainable business based on local content, including citizen journalism?...