Citizen journalism is based upon citizens taking a lead role in collecting, analyzing and reporting news and information. Sometimes known as participatory journalism or democratic journalism it operates outside mainstream media but aims to use conventional journalistic practices.
With the rise of the internet, citizen journalism is a growing world-wide phenomenon, but, it’s not without some valid criticisms. Many of these are based around issues such as quality and professionalism.
Illawarra News http://www.illawarranews.org and The New Bush Telegraph http://newbushtelegraph.org.au are a couple of CJ sites.
On 17 March I organised a forum on citizen journalism in Nowra. See a bit about it here:
Around 30 people turned up for the forum which was delightful. Thanks to Nowra’s Squid Studio for hosting https://www.facebook.com/squidstudionowra
I’ll be posting a review of the forum soon.