Citizen Journalism and Traditional Journalism ( Week 7)

Being a journalism student, how could I resist this topic? 'Is citizen journalism the end of traditional journalism?'

First, we need to know what we're talking about. Traditional journalism is obvious - it's print, tv, radio etc. Information that is distributed by someone who is both paid for it, and trained for it.
Citizen journalism is a phenomenon that arose with web 2.0 - it's information distributed by members of the general public - blogs and the like.

But to answer the question, there is first another one in the way. Are they actually competing?

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, supports citizen journalism, saying that 'young people no longer wanted news presented to them as a gospel by a god-like figure who told them what was important. They want news that speaks to them personally.'
And the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) has gone from passively accepting user-generated content to soliciting it, saying that 'it provided audiences with a wider diversity of voices.' This was evident first in the London bombings in 2005, where people submitted thousands of stills, videos, texts, and eyewitness accounts on request. Similar things have happened with other large newsworthy events, such as the more recent riots in England, where people again submitted pictures and videos.
Another instance is The New York Times, which released a community centered news site, The Local, linked in to the main site, on which the public contributes stories. “We’ll be striving to empower residents to report on their own communities,” said editor for digital initiatives, Jim Schachter. 

As Richard Sambook, a BBC journalist for 30 years says, 'citizen and professional journalism are “complementary.”' The emergence of one in no way indicates the fall of the other. Indeed, most news companies and websites are trying to incorporate it, use it to give viewers a more realistic viewpoint from many different views, all from everyday people like themselves. Citizen journalism is useful in providing information not available from conventional information sources, or information that is cheaper. Cooking blogs can provide recipes cheaper than a magazine, and users can comment on it and recommend changes. Technology blogs can give information more up to date than conventional sources.
But the two can, and are, augmenting each other. They can, and are, coexisting, helping each other, and covering the others flaws.

So is citizen journalism the end of traditional journalism? No more than twitter is the end of Facebook. the two can coexist and incorporate each other.

References:

- Sambook, R 2008, 'Four Types of Citizen Journalism,' YouTube Video, viewed on 8 September 2011, at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrJH6TYVfmk>


- Plush, C 2009, 'Big media embraces citizen journalism,' viewed on 8 September 2011, at <http://neovox.journalismaustralia.com/big_media_embraces_eir.php>

- Bruns, A n.d. 'News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for E-Journalism,' viewed 8 September 2011, at <http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf>

- Bruns, A n.d. 'From Reader to Writer: Citizen Journalism as News Produsage,' viewed 8 September 2011, at <http://produsage.org/files/2010/From%20Reader%20to%20Writer.pdf>