Evolution of civic journalism

The citizen Journalism movement

This is a good article about the origins of citizen Journalism and the part that citizen journalists played in breaking the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorney.

Commenting on the important role for such a new media that is not corporate dominated and owned, but that is able to fulfill the role of citizen journalism, Linda Milazzo writes, "New Media voices ... won't permit another president to disregard the will of the people as the "Old Press" wantonly do, a new press will have free unencumbered voices, much of which arise from the Internet."(12)


Citizen Journalism has played a big part in the middle east when the mainstream media is often run by the government and their are severe restriction on freedom of speech. In China, Iran and Egypt several bloggers have been arrested for casting a spotlight on social justice.

OhmyNews International is a good site to go to for stories about citizen journalism since Oh My news was one of the first major media organizations to promote citizen journalism.

Iraq still remains the most dangerous assignment for Journalists according to the Committee to Project Journalists as the death toll for Journalists killed since 2003 reaches 100. This also is one of the reasons why American journalists rarely leave the settle of the green zone to capture the story of Iraq civilians. The best way to get their story as I state in early blogs is to go on the Internet and search out blogs and video blogs create by Iraq citizens.

The Sunlight Foundation is pooling citizen journalists to investigate the government. One of the projects gives directions of how to see if representatives are putting their spouses on their campaign payrolls.
So far they have investigated 438 member and found 19 spouses who were paid by a member's campaign committee-totaling $636,876 since January 1, 2005.

They have also sent letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to lobby for legislation to require members file their personal financial information as part of their campaign for government transparency.

Here is a good blog about the development of blogging and how the mainstream media has turned towards bloggers and citizen Journalists for help with reporting.

The L.A. Times published a debate between two journalists about the current state of the news media and its future. They both seem to agree that the Internet is

opening up a whole new world and dramatically transforming the possibilities for journalism.
and To secure its future, Big Media is going to have to try something it hasn't excelled at in recent years: Producing a quality product.

More and more websites from The Chicago Tribune with Triblocal to neighborsgo are going up all the time that act like community bulletin board with community-generated content, where people can post info and picture on local events. In a sense these sites let average citizens contribute to a profiles of their home town Like MySpace made the art of creating you own profile popular. In a way these sites can also give little towns a chance to advertise themselves with real stories from people without all the spin that tourism office's dream up.