JD Lasica

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citizen journalism

Accuracy tip sheet

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How to emulate the practices of professional journalists

As more individuals practice citizen journalism and more organizations incorporate media into their online communication strategies, it’s important to keep in mind the fundamental precepts of journalism.

Here’s a short guide to ensuring accuracy from the Center for Citizen Media in a project that I managed.

Before you write

1. The best way to maintain accuracy is to develop a system and stick to it.

2. Take the extra seconds to read back to the interviewee the spelling of his or her name. If you need an age, ask for a birth date and year.

3. Avoid using secondary sources to verify facts.

4. If you have to use secondary sources, find at least two and make sure they agree independently; don’t simply ask one to confirm what the other said.

5. Verify phone/fax numbers, web and email addresses. For example, copy the url from the document and paste it into a browser. Call the phone number. [Read more…] about Accuracy tip sheet

Citizen journalism questions and answers

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Where to find citizen journalism sites — and how to start your own

Editor’s note: Some links in the article below may no longer work.

By Christopher Grotke, Mediagiraffe
and Jarah Euston, FresnoFamous

What is citizen journalism?

It is community news and information shared online and/or in print, with contributions written by users and readers. It can be any combination of text, image, audio file, podcast or video. Stories typically include user comments, fostering additional discussion.

What else is it called?

Grassroots journalism, community news, we media, open source journalism, folk journalism, bottom-up journalism, etc.

How does citizen journalism differ from citizens media?

Citizen journalism is a narrow subset of citizens media. Citizen journalism chiefly centers on covering news and events in your community, whether it’s a major news event that someone captures on a camera phone, or a podcast of a political rally, or coverage of a swim meet or little league game. Often, citizen journalism can fill in the gap in local news coverage that newspapers have abandoned. [Read more…] about Citizen journalism questions and answers

OhmyNews: ‘Every citizen can be a reporter’

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A tour inside the newsroom of the pioneering citizen journalism publication

Following is a Q&A with Jean K. Min, communications director of OhmyNews International, the trail-blazing citizen journalism publication in Seoul, South Korea. The exchange — with questions put to him by myself and Matthew Lee of the Center for Citizen Media — took place in January 2007. [Read more…] about OhmyNews: ‘Every citizen can be a reporter’

Citizen sleuthing: The unmasking of Lonelygirl15

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19-year-old offers tips on research methods used to uncover her true identity

Matt Foremski, pictured below, tells how he did some citizen sleuthing to discover the true identity of YouTube’s Lonelygirl15. She was not a home-schooled 16-year-old girl named Bree but rather an actress named Jessica Rose, who had recently moved from New Zealand to Burbank, Calif. I caught up with Foremski in an AIM chat to learn the details of how he broke one of the biggest Internet stories of 2006. [Read more…] about Citizen sleuthing: The unmasking of Lonelygirl15

Personal video journalism hits the Net

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A camera, firewire, Internet connection and some gumption are all you need to Webcast

By J.D. Lasica
Online Journalism Review

By night, Raven — the name everyone uses for 47-year-old Harold Kionka — works as a janitor, mopping the floors and cleaning the grease traps in TGIFriday’s in Daytona Beach, Fla.

By day, he operates almost single-handedly a 24-hour Internet TV station, serving as owner, station manager, producer and on-air personality.  Daytonabeach-live brings live coverage of events in the Florida resort town to as many as 17,000 viewers a day.

Raven and a handful of others are at the vanguard of a new breed of journalism: personal broadcasting. Using equipment that is now relatively inexpensive and simple to use, these video pioneers are claiming a stake in territory that was once the exclusive province of big media.

But let Raven tell it. “I consider a lot of what I do real reporting with no strings attached. When a major event comes to town, I’m there with my camcorder to record everything that goes down while adding some color commentary. On slower days, I still capture the city’s day-to-day life.” [Read more…] about Personal video journalism hits the Net

Citizens as budding reporters and editors

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Seniors & teens bring personal experiences to Web publishing

This column — my last for AJR — appeared in the July-August 1999 issue of The American Journalism Review.

Where will online journalism be in five or 10 years? In the hands of more and more regular folks, who may not even think of themselves as journalists.

The Internet has long held out the ideal of Everyman as publisher — ordinary citizens who take back journalism from the professional class. As the Web matures, we’re starting to see a flourishing of community journalism, a phenomenon that has both distant roots and a promising future.

“The news consumer is turning into a news provider,” says Walter Bender, associate director of the MIT Media Lab. “It’s not that these news consumers will compete with the New York Times, but the consumer becomes part of the process of telling stories in a way that enriches the public discourse.” [Read more…] about Citizens as budding reporters and editors

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