When I attended journalism school at Rutgers, the underlying premise of every class, every lesson, was that we were the expert professionals whose job it is to gather and filter the news for readers.

It’s time to toss those textbooks onto the bonfire of the vanities, for little did we see the rise of citizens media, a grassroots-powered phenomenon in which users are becoming both competitors and collaborators with established news organizations. It is this media revolution-in-the-making that Dan Gillmor skillfully chronicles in his new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (O’Reilly Media).

This is certainly the most important journalism book of this year, for it aptly details a gathering storm that is about to sweep away everything we thought we knew about the news. [Read more…] about Book review: Dan Gillmor’s We, the Media