Stop Gawking Over Citizen Journalism

The citizen journalism genie is out of the bottle. I don’t even think it’s worth having these re-hashed trend pieces on it. They are formulaic and don’t break new ground.

Everyone knows what the internet is. You don’t need to produce a 9-minute video telling them about it. I would only recomend the following video to my 89-year-old grandmother.

Why does the idea of citizen journalism demand so much gawking?

7 thoughts on “Stop Gawking Over Citizen Journalism”

  1. Because all developments on the Net are “new” to large numbers of people even if they are old hat to me or you or some other subset of users. And as that “newness” rolls in waves across the social landscape it generates these reactions, inspiring “huh?”s among the old hat crowd.

  2. That’s very true Scott. It would be niave of me to think that citizen journalism is known to all.

    One good thing did come out of that video (or maybe it was another I watched last night…. I spent a fair amount of time looking at these types of videos).

    I began to wonder about the success of OhMyNews. It wasn’t technological – it was, as boss Rosen says – all about organizing people.

    Being a citizen journalist there became cool. Journalism somehow transformed into geek-chic. How can that be done in America?

  3. > “Being a citizen journalist there became cool. Journalism somehow transformed into geek-chic. How can that be done in America?

    That is an excellent, and potentially quite productive, question.

    How did it become cool there?

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