Göteborg: Huge returns with citizen journalism

Werner Eggert, Editor in Chief of Tide in Germany, spoke about the advantages of citizen journalism and how to train the 'untrainables' at the 15th World Editors Forum.


 Eggert said that there are many benefits that come with citizen journalism.

• It is mostly free
• Citizen journalists see trends that professional reporters don't see
• Producers/contributors are amateurs and love their topic
  
• It is a way to reach a new audience

But of course there are also disadvantages of citizen journalism.

• They are not professional and not trained
  
• They go on holiday and don't tell you when they will come back or if they come back, which makes it very difficult to plan a program.
• They are obsessed with their area of interest and have problems with producing balanced stories.
• They overestimate their capacity
• It's not really journalism

Eggert and Tides solution is to train the citizens in how to handle professional equipment, how to manage their products, maintain ethical standards, deadlines etc. One problem is that producers often don't want to be trained and often think the content is more important than the quality. Tide therefore decided to set up their own academy for citizen journalists with extremely short courses (mostly they are only four hours). The courses are very basic and focus on practical examples. At the Tide academy they always use professional equipment, Eggert believs that this way the citizen journalists will perform more professional. His impression is that after the course professional quality matters more for the participants.

The courses costs 45 euro or 100 euro depending on the length. From January to May 2008 Tide produced 33 courses with 194 participants and the citizens are now producing 1,5 hours of new video programs per day. According to Eggert citizen journalism is little investment with huge returns.