Acts of journalism by the citizenry are powerful, important, and will not go away.
Citizen journalism
Innovation in Journalism: the death roll that is politics
At the moment politicians and reporters seem to be locked into a death roll. Both sides know they need to change, but neither side is able to break free.
The Stream: where social media meets TV news
Al-Jazeera has had enormous success lately thanks to its coverage of the Middle East protests, and is about to launch a new social media show focusing on news from citizen journalists and bloggers.
Citizen journalism is dead, long live crowdsourcing
Citizen journalism is dead, delegates to the Future of Crowdsourcing Summit were told yesterday. But the new tools for crowdsourcing remain an exciting opportunity for journalism.
Online news: the Year of the Dwarf Penis
Internet journalism isn’t just sex, gore and photoshopped galleries of celebrities as fruit. Think of the Iran protests and the WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video, says Crikey editor Sophie Black, in a defence of online news.
The differences between public servants and journalists
The controversy over the outing of the blogger Grog’s Gamut has now passed out of the hands of newspapers and the blogosphere and on to the desk of senior public servants, who have some interesting questions to wrestle with, writes Margaret Simons.
Why I quit HuffPo
There’s only so long that bloggers and citizen journalists can write original journalism for free. Journo Mayhill Fowler published her resignation email trail with a HuffPo editor, discussing the lack of support she received.
watch Raw video of the Moscow bombing aftermath
Russians caught up in the suicide bomb attacks on Moscow trains have been posting graphic videos and images of the chaos online. The NYT’s Lede blog collects some of the most shocking.
Journalists: the kings of multi-tasking
Journalists are now forced to write copy, shoot video, gather sound, take photos and edit their stories — as well as doing research, interviewing and writing. At what cost to journalism? asks Gail Shister.
Citizen journalism, 1960s style
Journalism.co.uk unearthed a great 1960s British newsreel about a 14-year-old boy running his own newspaper. And surprise! Today he’s a blogger.
Just who is a “journalist” in Australia?
Changes to Australia’s Freedom of Information legislation next year will make it easier for journalists to access government documents — but just who does the government consider a “journalist”? asks Peter Timmins. Do Australia’s bloggers also have a Right to Know?
Arianna Huffington: Suck it up, Rupert
Murdoch and his offsiders have called news aggregators “parasites,” “content kleptomaniacs”, and “tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet”. Enough with the name calling, says Arianna Huffington.
Russian police officer exposes corruption via YouTube
A Russian police officer has been sacked after posting a video on YouTube exposing police corruption. Given what happens to many investigative journos in the country, we’d say he got off lightly.
Fort Hood: citizen journalists can’t handle the truth
The tweets, blogs and blurry mobile phone photos flooding the internet during the Fort Hood shooting did nothing but spread misinformation and breach the privacy of those killed or wounded in the incident, says Paul Carr.
The untold story behind the words that rocked the Obama campaign
Barack Obama’s notorious campaign remark in that “bitter” Pennsylvania blue-collar voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” was almost his undoing. Mayhill Fowler provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into why he said what he did.
The internet ushers in the age of the ‘amafessional’
The internet has allowed amateurs to directly rival professionals in opportunity, talent, quality and price, says Mark Penn — and not just in the field of journalism; bedroom musicians, artists and authors are all shaking up their respective fields with some serious competition.
We are all authors now
Two scientists have plotted the number of published authors per year since the year 1400, finding that with the rise of social media, the number is growing nearly tenfold every year. Authors — once an elite minority — will soon be a majority.
Freedom (or freebies) of the press takes another meaning
There was once a time when photographers were sent to cover major events, like today’s Sydney dust storms. These days, free pictures are harvested from the internet.
Fed-up unis take science reporting into their own hands
Sick of the mainstream media’s mediocre reporting on science and medicine, 35 US universities have partnered to create the non-profit wire service Futurity to distribute articles about their research and discoveries.
Photojournalism set for a shake-up
The launch of “citizen photo agencies”, where news outlets can buy cheap and sometimes exclusive snaps from amateur shutterbugs, could pose a serious threat to the future of professional photojournalism.
NYT Magazine photo fakery fiasco
Chalk one up for citizen journalism: how an eagle-eyed blogger caught out a New York Times Magazine photographer engaging in some digital trickery.
Iran’s digital warzone gets bloody
While the real-time blood conflict in Tehran seems to have settled down, the cyberwar is becoming bigger, more furious and, as always, more confusing, writes Crikey intern Bhakthi Puvanenthiran.
VIDEO: the geek revolution
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow calls Iranian citizen journalism “intoxicating” and interviews NBC News reporter Richard Engel who just returned from Iran: it’s a “very, if you will, 1980s, 1990s” media crackdown.
Citizen journalists blog (and tweet and video) Iran election result
Although there are signs the Iranian government is trying to cut some communications with the outside world, citizen journalism appears to be thriving on the web. BBC wraps the coverage.
Citizen journalism: 1, evolutionary instincts for survival: 0
Over the weekend there was a massive gas explosion in Moscow. It raised questions about Russia’s ageing energy infrastructure … and the sanity of Russian civilians.
