After just six months, citizen journalism start-up Scribblesheet has shut down due to financial troubles, according to co-founder John Ndege.

Ndege thinks there's a need for citizen journalism, adding to the continuous discussion of citizen journalism's future,  however, "you need money to recruit writers but you need writers to make money."

Though other web companies with similar business models such as Newsvine and OhMyNews, Scribblesheet was the first to have completely user generated news.

Ndege believes that citizen journalism is "supposed to be about the man or woman on the street telling his or her story, not about the trained professional," thus cites NowPublic as the best business model around citizen journalism. Citizen journalists provide the website with content, and in turn, NowPublic sells it on wire services.

Guardian blogger Jemima Kiss concedes that "building up a new brand from scratch in the current web climate, without major funding or a known brand, is extremely hard." She believes that Scribblesheet may have been too confusing to the public, without a "clear context and objective" for how their news would be published and distributed. Furthermore, some of the public may not want to think of themselves as 'citizen journalists'.

Source: Guardian.co.uk