Still not convinced participatory media can be an advancement for journalism? Blogger and journalist Benoît Raphaël, who's now editor of Le Monde's participatory media venture Le Post, offers a few reasons to believe in the advent of participatory media (in light of the launch of pro-am French news site MediaPart):

- Participatory media furthers the democratization of news, as readers get involved in the news process and collaborate with outlets.
- Participatory media multiplies sources of information, which is generally speaking a good thing. Journalists are still necessary to filter information, but there is now a bigger pool of potential witnesses.
- "News is no longer the trait of media only. But verification and filtering are," wrote Raphaël. It's good that readers can have more say in the news agenda, but this makes it even more important for traditional media to do their editorial job and monitor the accuracy of the new sources.
- Participatory media has led journalists to renew their approach to news coverage, because they now receive instantaneous and permanent feedback from readers. Readers have an increasing role to play in the prioritization of news and suggesting coverage of topics which are typically 'off the media'.
- Participatory media is helping to better - to make evolve - the standards of journalism, by offering non-conventional methods of journalism, via blogging, information sharing, interaction and more.

As pointed out by Raphaël in conclusion, participatory journalism doesn't imply that readers are journalists, or citizen journalists. In fact, participatory media means that journalists and newsrooms build their coverage in collaboration with readers.

In the participatory media model, "journalists construct news in a porous way, transcending the notions of objectivity and subjectivity by that of honesty," wrote Raphaël, echoing Philippe Couve.

Source: Benoit Raphaël blog (link in French)