By Femi Malik
Matric No: - PGD/10/04/2097
PGD Public Relations & Advertising (Part – Time)
Differences between Citizen Journalist and Journalist
Matric No: - PGD/10/04/2097
PGD Public Relations & Advertising (Part – Time)
Differences between Citizen Journalist and Journalist
Journalism is the gathering of news/data/information, processing them into meaningful facts (refine) and disseminating refined news for people’s consumption. Saddled with this arduous tasks of news gathering and management are professionally groomed individuals, who on daily basis are assigned beats to nose around for news wherever they are, write and sometimes re-write them for their respective desk editors who further refined them (edit), situate them in their relevant contexts before disseminating them to members of public for consumption.
Lately, particularly with the advent of the internet and its associated services, this traditional news gathering and dissemination profession has been encroached upon by another group better referred to as Citizen Journalists.
Citizen Journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic", "guerrilla" or "street journalism") is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,". The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."
Put very simply, citizen journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do – report information. That information can take many forms, from a podcast editorial to a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can include text, pictures, audio and video. But it’s basically all about communicating information of some kind.
Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which is practiced by professional journalists, or collaborative journalism, which is practiced by professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.
Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006: The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.
Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006: The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.
On the other hand, quality news coverage journalists, who I wish to refer to here as traditional journalists unlike citizen journalists are professionally groomed individuals imbued with the stock in trade of news gathering, news sifting, analysing and reporting. Again, unlike citizen journalists, traditional journalists are guided by ethics of the pen profession, write in a balance and unbiased manner. Most importantly, their source of livelihood hinge on the job.
Citizen journalists still hire professional journalist to finetune or smoothen the rough edges of their work. In addition to quality news coverage, many of these non-profit online news organisation offer a ‘steal our stuff’ policy that provides newspapers with free news. This is an obvious cost advantage over the traditional news wires that charge for content.
Some of the prominent media in Nigeria that have promoted citizen journalism are Punch (send your photo), PM News (send your news).
References
Dominick, J.R: ‘The Dynamics of Mass Communication, Media in the Digital Age’,
Tenth Edition, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.
http:/
Some of the prominent media in Nigeria that have promoted citizen journalism are Punch (send your photo), PM News (send your news).
References
Dominick, J.R: ‘The Dynamics of Mass Communication, Media in the Digital Age’,
Tenth Edition, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.
http:/
www.editorsweblog.org
Saturday Editor of The Times and World Editors Forum President George Brock writes about the burgeoning field of citizen journalism, deeming that the term is a "misnomer". Despite the potential of the phenomenon to change the media landscape, when it comes down to it, all publications will be judged
http://citmedia.org/blog/2008/07/14/where-did-citizen-journalist-come-from/
http://www.citizenjournalismafrica.org/en/what-is-citizen-journalism
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5578671-146/story.csp
Qasim Akinreti February 8 at 7:17am Report
Quite interesting. very good attempt. keep it up.
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