I, Reporter

Glimpse the Citizen Media of Tomorrow

The Knight Foundation, the funder behind the I, Reporter Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project, today launched a new web site that provides a fascinating window into the citizen media innovation. The group blog is called MediaShift Idea Lab, and the idea is to allow the folks behind each of the Knight Challenge Grant winners to explore the progress of their innovative Internet projects with each other and in the public eye.

As the blog editor Mark Glaser puts it, "Idea Lab will be a place where you can read about what innovators are doing to help reinvent community news. The dozens of authors at this new group blog -- hosted by PBS.org and funded by the Knight Foundation -- have received grants from Knight in their 21st Century News Challenge, and are going to report first-hand on the status of their projects."

Check out our first entries on Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker-- a blog post about our initial progress with the project, and another about some lessons learned.

Conversational Journalism

I just read an intriguing interview with Ray Hacke, Citizen Journalism Editor at the Bakersfield Californian -- an established print daily newspaper that has apparently made a strong commitment to fostering and showcasing citizen journalism.

SEE: "Narrative Journalism, CitJ and The Bakersfield Californian" (in Journalism Hope by K. Paul Mallasch, Jan. 31)

This excerpt, which opened the interview, caught my interest:

Journalism Hope: I like the fact you used the term "contributing writer." Did you consciously stay away from the "citizen journalist" term? If so, why?

Ray Hacke: Actually, we did choose to stay away from the term "citizen journalism." The reason was that we wanted average readers -- people who have little to no writing experience whatsoever -- to feel like they could have a voice in our paper, too.

The word "journalist" has some heavy connotations to it. We felt people might hear it and think they'd have to have some formal training or be thoroughly knowledgeable about grammar, spelling, style, etc., to write for us. We figured that might scare them off, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Our overriding mantra for citizen journalism is, "Journalism is a conversation," and we want people from all walks of life to sit down at the table and join in. So far, we've actually been pretty successful in that regard. We've gotten contributions from writers as young as 12 and as old as 90, from janitors as well as doctors.

That exchange really got my gears going on a whole lot of levels -- especially the concept of conversational journalism...

Miranda Spencer: Pro/Citizen Journalism Collaboration Works

A few days ago, In "Citizen & Mainstream Journalists: Better Together?" I speculated about the good things that might spring from more direct collaboration and cooperation between citizen and professional journalists. I cross-posted a shorter version of that piece to Poynter's E-Media Tidbits weblog. (See: Got Narrative? If Not, Citizen Journalism Might Help)

In a comment to my Tidbits posting, journalist Miranda Spencer offered some examples of where she's seen such collaboration work pretty well...

Fresno Famous to Push for CitJ Disclosure

Jarah Euston, who runs the Fresno, CA community site Fresno Famous, yesterday posted "A Note on Disclosure" in her personal blog Spontaneous Orders. With a nod to my earlier article "Open CitJ Sites: Why Not Require Transparency?" (thanks, Jarah), she wrote:

"We’re making some changes soon at Famous, and have made every effort to build transparency into the experience. Famous will have a disclosures field at then end of every user-submitted story, and profile pages for all contributors..."

Westport Now: Citizen Correspondent

I'm still on the east coast. Right now, Adam and I are preparing for a meeting with Gordon Joseloff, editor of Westport Now -- an intriguing citizen journalism venture featuring news by and about the people of Westport, CT. We're both looking forward to it.

Since I had a couple of minutes before we head out, I stopped by the Westport Now site to see what they have up there today. Actually, the site's lead story at the moment is a good example something I've been wanting to discuss here: the citizen correspondent story...