The Future of Citizen Journalism

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The Future of Citizen Journalism

This is an interesting column from AlterNet on the future of citizen journalism.

I'm collecting this sort of stuff now because I'm writing a book. The working title is Journalism in the Digital Age: Reporters, reportage and the public sphere. I'm interested in commentary as I go along and I've decided on a small experiment: I'm going to blog the book as I write it.

I'm not quite sure what that really means at this point. Perhaps I'll put extracts or ideas up here for you to question and comment on. I suppose this is really the first entry in that process.

Does news HAVE a future?

It's probably still a rare thing for a blogger to actually advertise a rival blog in a post, but here goes. This deserves a shout. I got this message from Steve Borris, the associate director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology at the Washington University in St Louis. I've had a quick tour of "the future of news" and it's probably going to become a regular stop on my rounds of the blogosphere. It's covering some of the same ground as me, but ventures into technology a bit more than I might do. The "future" of news and journalism is a subject close to my own intellectual interests and my own passions about the future of journalism (but not as we know it). I will add a permanent link in my own blogroll, but for now, check it out. Here's the gist of Steve's message:

Hello,

I would like to call your attention to "The Future of News" blog that was launched last month. It is a spin-off of a college course by the same name that I teach at Washington University in St. Louis. This site provides a vision of what news will look like 5-15 years from now. It also provides ongoing commentary on how closely day-to-day events fit this vision. While most web-based information on the future of news tends to focus on the perspectives of those involved with current news organizations or technology, this site will also incorporate perspectives from history, political science, consumer marketing, economics, and finance. This should be evident in the three permanent articles that I have posted on the site: News as it was meant to be, Four advances that set news back, and The future of news.