A good run down on what you would need to do if you are serious about starting your own citizen journalism initiative in terms of organization, equipment, researching and logistics.
Not surprisingly social media tools are useful tools to help you on your way. The key aspect, though is to be ORGANIZED.
A fairly straightforward article about common social media blunders that can hurt your career. Pay special attention to the very last one.
Surprise, surprise. It seems politicos are drawn to social media because of its ability to let them get their word out without having pesky reporters stick a camera or a mike in their face. My personal take on this is that they could very easily be lulled into a sense of security that could lead to them posting something that they might regret. Provided of course that it’s the politicians who are doing the posting and not some unpaid intern.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/11/politicians-use-social-media-to-bypass-the-press-corps306.html
The Seattle Times for its story that covered the shooting deaths of four Lakewood police officers and in the process used Twitter to send out real time updates on the story.
The paper also used Google Wave to allow readers to participate in the telling of the story.
This seems like it could be a useful resource for people in the news industry or just for curious people in general.
Established in 2009, the site has real-time updates from journalists who regularly tweet. The list includes The New York Times’ Social Media Director, The Wall Street Journal’s online Managing Editor and Wired.com’s Editor in Chief.
Good to see that there is scope for major expansion in the field of citizen journalism. A recent initiative called Allvoices recently announced a major expansion that will see it set up news desks in 30 countries.
Below is the organization’s website:
If social media outlets want to be taken as seriously as the traditional media outlets in the public sphere, shouldn’t they be subject to the same rules and regulations that govern journalism. This example of a blogger in Canada who disclosed the identity of a victim in a kidnapping case raises that question.
A community of journalists with no affiliation except for each other who publish information from various sources (protected) that most mainstream media organizations will probably never even consider publishing.
Is this crowdsourced investigative journalism?
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