ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
With the increasing choices of platform like social networks, blogs, private paper and online media, citizen journalism has becoming bigger in journalism than 20 years ago. Now everyone can be a journalist as long as they have a place to publish their words and unfettered access to internet. Public has now learn to get news and information from various form of media rather than newspaper itself. Instead of wait for the news to be published. This way of getting news is permeating everyone's life. Acceptance level of aggressive thoughts and expressive comments are higher in the public. However, citizen journalism is different than public journalism. Although citizen journalism is based on public journalism principles, the participation levels are different. From profit maximization point of view, can these types of journalism do well from that. Apart from that, public journalism wasn't well accepted by career journalism at the beginning.Here I pull out several articles of opinions from renowned journalist - Leslie Walker, Philip Meyer, Bonnie Bressers and last but not least, father of civic journalism, David Merritt.
Walker, L. (2004) On Local's Site, Everyone's a Journalist. The Washington Post. Retrieved from ttp://www.writersforliteracy.org/onlocalsites.pdf
The writer, Leslie Walker is an journalist specializes on multimedia news and digital media trends. She is also a Knight Visiting Professor in Digital Innovation at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She took an incident in Brattleboro, Vermont as an example of how fast news were spread before the reporters manage to collect, edit and print it on local newspaper. The availability of a local site - iBrattleboro.com whom claims to be Brattleboro's original and authentic citizen journalism news site allows people to publish news on the next second it happens. From this local site she then talked about how profitability it can be to the founder especially on advertising. She also mentioned there are many more companies out there planning to launch local citizen journalist site and only publish printed media fortnightly. It will be a good news for small or medium size business. As advertising on major newspapers are very costly, these tailored and localized site will cost lesser and have more significant effects as the readers are locals which fit their targeted market segment. Walker did mentioned a little about how these websites work. Besides few full-time employees that hired to screens submission and publish them, other reporters are all citizens. Founders are providing space to post journals or blogs so that readers or users can enjoy the freedom of journalism. Walker also talked about why demands of citizen journalism is expanding and why readers are shifting their preference from big newspaper to local ones. Lastly she concluded the article with iBrattleboro.com's founders comments about how the interest of citizen shifts all the time as observed about the trend on the website.Meyer, P ( September 1995). Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity. Based on a talk given to IRE conference on computer assisted reporting in Cleveland.
As an expertise in journalism quality, civic journalism and newspaper industry, Philip Meyer is a Knight Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This article is based on a talk Meyer given to IRE conference. Meyer provided an insightful opinion of the impact of public journalism to career journalism. Started the talk by addressing the discomfort feel over the concept of public journalism. As the definition for public journalism wasn't clearly define on what it does and the theories behind it, Meyer pointed out the key elements public journalism should fit to be supported by career journalist. He suggested that public journalist can diversify the problems of information overload. As mentioned in Leslie Walker's post, public journalism proven to be able to draws in profit as the problem is highly concerned by newspaper agency. Two theories that has been tugging journalism are well explained and how public journalism should be performing on both theories. As we thought public journalism is much easier than career journalism, he pointed out in fact, it is very difficult and expensive. Quoting Senge's words he finely explained the three levels of abstraction to see the possibilities for shaping the future. As the proper goal of public journalism is to create a learning community, Meyer explained the importance for the public journalist to have the same objective and believing the same philosophy as investigate journalist. Meyer concluded the talk appealing his final stand and addressed his optimistic opinions that public journalism and investigate journalism are able to coexist and cherish one another.Bressers, B. (2003). Civic journalism goes online. The Quill, 91(2), 25-25. http://search.proquest.com/docview/219778400?accountid=14723
The author is an assistant professor of journalism at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University. While civic journalism are beginning to spread, numbers of local interactive forums are set up. Bressers interviewed Chris Hardie, the local news editor of La Cross (Wis.) Tribune who recently set up an online interactive boards. He wanted to cover an issue that will be explosive, and he believed that organizing a space for local citizens to discuss and comment will make a better impact of this news to them. Hence, Hardie got grant from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism to launched a website that is a combination of interactive message board. He also talked about his purpose of setting up and the positive effects on the society. Although this space is owned by the newspaper, users are allow to comment freely and raise up issues that is concerned by the locals. To the larger extent, Bressers also took the online edition of Capital Journal as an example and once again proven these sites not only increase the participation of public in these issues, they also brings out citizen that is actually committing and concerning about social issues. By providing a platform like this, people with opinions can express their thoughts without having to attend meetings. She concluded the article by quoting the executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism saying the potential for civic journalism has a lot and it seems unlimited.
Merritt, D. (2009). Chapter 3 : What Citizen Journalism Can Learn from Public Journalism. In Public Journalism 2.0 : The Promise and Reality of a Citizen Engaged Press. Routledge. Retrieved May 24, 2012, from Ebook Library.
Davis Merritt, father of civic journalism who wrote the book Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the News is Not Enough that solidify the theory of public journalism. Internet's Big Bang has brought journalism to a whole new level and became easier to access. Citizen journalism has emerged and he raised the question of how citizen journalism define it's philosophical base is still unanswered. In this chapter he mentioned Jay Rosen, another significant journalist that has helped to built the philosophy of civic journalism. "This was not something journalists could easily address from within. They were accustomed to covering the news, not rebuilding the logic on which the news was based" (Rosen, 1999, p.25). Merritt discussed how public journalism slowly evolved into citizen journalism with the vast advancement of internet. He also pointed out a threat of information maybe biased as it can be repackaged by people who isn't intellectually honest. While public journalism concerns about the viability of public life, citizen journalism may only concern about individual issues or specific interest. Barriers of citizen journalism like the fragmentation of internet, individualized problems and decentralized conversation and also effort needed to put in in order to reach cohesive theory and philosophy. At the end of the chapter, Merritt pointed out that newspaper companies may be shifting to new media (eg, Internet websites) from printed version but their ability to preserve the level of journalism they have traditionally provided is worth concerned. Although there is so many things citizen journalism can learn from public journalism, Merritt expressed his opinion about how both can help to improve journalism in a public and individual way.
