What's in store for citizen journalism in 2008?

Posted by Barbara Nguyen on January 28, 2008 at 4:57 PM

According to Ground Reports, 2008 will be the year citizen journalism evolves, after having cemented its establishment in 2007. Leaders such as Newsvine, NowPublic, Orato and Digital Journal offer many similar features: proprietary content submission tools, community ratings, and even some occasional revenue share. But it’s “how these players break out of the pack in the coming year (that) will determine everything.”

The article summarizes its key predictions on what to expect from citizen journalism in 2008:

What citizen journalism can learn from Open Source: Get organized.
Citizen journalism can apparently take a lesson from the Open Source software development concept: build in a hierarchical accountability system with focused groups, oversight and administration. Both citizen journalism and Open Source rely on the contributions of people working for free, motivated by a sense of collective accomplishment and personal recognition. Because this setup can allow for isolated contributors to make singular mistakes that affect the entire community, Ground Report suggests that building a multilevel system of editorial and administrative controls—or a more collaborative system of publishing—may prevent the dangers of isolated reporting.

What citizen journalism can learn from traditional media: Look at developing markets.
“It’s a massive mistake to assume citizen journalism’s stronghold is the US & Europe,” states Ground Report. Branching out to developing markets reveals that places like India, quickly gaining in internet penetration, are already very familiar with and taking part in citizen journalism’s growing prevalence. Ground Report notes that, “developing markets often have more controlled media—sometimes even state-controlled—and the internet offers a welcome bounty of freely flowing information and thought.”

What citizen journalism can learn from Web 2.0: Video, video, video.
With internet traffic in the US turning increasingly towards video and multimedia sites like YouTube, finding a way to effectively incorporate video with citizen journalism will prove an important but difficult task. The article explains that, “going with the semantic web theme, citizen journalism video can’t be a big content dumping ground like YouTube. It will need to be focused, filtered and presented in a useful, accessible format if it’s to have any value.”

What citizen journalism can learn from Google: separate the wheat from the chaff.
Citizen journalism can take a lesson from Google by establishing a way to categorize, tag, filter, rate and organize its information in a way that makes its valuable and compelling.

For more details, please consult Ground Reports' original article.

Source: groundreport.com

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