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I agree with most of your points about how citizen journalists will never replace real journalists. It is an issue, however, that must be handled delicately. I can’t help but think of the Steve Jobs has a deadly disease fiasco a while ago that turned out to be false. That story broke on CNN’s iReport, which is meant for citizen journalists. Someone submitted that story, CNN didn’t fact check it and it exploded. Apple’s stock actually dropped as a result of a citizen journalist not getting their facts straight. Granted, Apple is doing fine, but the point is that poor citizen journalism (and some poor professional journalism) can have detrimental results.
That being said, citizen journalism is happening. The best thing to do is embrace it and make sure that it happens in a responsible way.
Thank you Dave, for being braver than I. I’m always hesitant to call bullshit in public, in case I’m wrong.
@Megan – you spoke first, which makes you much braver. In fact, I found the piece through your blog – so the thanking is all on this side of the comment thread
@ Digidave
I was literally going to do a point by point, exhaustive, beat you over the head with a concrete baseball bat rebuttal, but I got soooooooooo tired after the first half…
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@Andrew What’s funny about the erroneous Steve Jobs story on iReport is it had a shred of truth to it. The furor over the iReport piece was, in part, responsible for making Jobs and Apple go public with their CEO’s health problems. Your example shows that citizen journalism is valuable when it can shine a light on stories the mainstream journalists are missing.