Aug
14
Why citizen journalism isn’t going away
August 14, 2008 |
By Clarence Cromwell
Another term for what this site promotes is democratic journalism, which sums up the excitement fairly well.
The best way to explain it is by comparison to western government: We put the tyrants out a long time ago and moved power into the hands of the people. Why hasn’t journalism gone that far?
Granted, newspaper executives are a bit nobler than tyrants. But, newspapers (and other media) tend to resist public input about how they should operate, what they should report, and how. This is evident in the level of frustration and cynicism when people talk about the media.
I think newspapers will eventually change, and I don’t think they need help to do it. But I don’t want to wait around for it to happen, either. This site has to do with democratizing journalism, right now, by helping people who want to set up a blog for their community.
Ultimately, opening up journalism to the public will make it stronger, in the same way that democracy made government more stable and more robust. And when journalism becomes better, it may make democracy even better.
The point being: Citizen journalism isn’t going to leave the scene anytime soon, because the democratization of the news media is necessary and inevitable.
Category: soapbox
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