Editors Weblog has an interesting breakdown on the various forms of Citizen Journalism. They include:
1. The citizen journalist who owns a digital camera or a camera phone and sends shootings to a news organisation during a major event (tsunami, London bombing…) or a local car accident
2. The citizen journalist who wants to cover its local or virtual community and produce targeted content
3. The citizen journalist who is a militant and campaigns for political reasons. How Eason Jordan was fired from CNN by infuriated bloggers in January 2005, was a good example of biased citizen journalism
4. The citizen journalist who is eager to participate to a « conversation » with professional journalists and bloggers. « News is just the beginning » says Jeff Jarvis and, in some cases, it is true.
No doubt something new has appeared in the last two years and that traditional newsrooms will have to deal with these new citizen journalists. But the idea that there is an essence of citizen journalism – as replacing the so-called traditional journalism – is dead. The full post is available here.
