This is significant, because it is the heart of Merrill's claim, that professional standards for journalism are doing more harm than good. (Merrill, n
Free website building and posting sites like Wordpress, on the other hand, encourage narrative entries and even provide for earning some income or linking to income producing options. In 2006, one of the first summaries of citizen journalism venues was put together (Bandon, 25)
The Weblog of the World Association of Newspaper and News Publishers (WAN-IFNA) was even more specific in claiming that informal writing of this nature was no threat to their sector. Apparently they do not believe that readers will find stories on a cat being stuck in a washing machine more fascinating than politicians or people with lots of money being stuck on their own spin cycles! Like citizen militia members, citizen journalists are either people who want to be journalists or people who just have something to say and want to share their take on a subject (Bentley 2)
CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN GERMANY Germany is a far different national location. It tends to be much more monolithic in outlook and cultural connectedness, and it does not always favor political opposition as the motivation for its citizen communications (Bruns)
Citizen Journalism, Tech, Advertising "If news media have to cut back and are unable to provide the same level of coverage for their communities that they did in the past, citizen journalism may need to step in," said Margaret Duffy, associate professor of the Missouri School of Journalism (Hurst)
One example of this phenomenon is the tweets that have erupted over the current NBA lockout. When NBA owners declared a lockout in the labor impasses with the Players Association, Commissioner David Stern declared a total gag order on all involved on his side (Bradley)
Furthermore, sports journalism had been highly formulaic. "A reporter attends a post-practice media scrum and either writes or broadcasts the new he has gathered to the thousands of waiting fans" (Goodman)
Anyone who questions the value of Twitter need only understand the role it has played in the world. "In five years, Twitter has become an increasingly valuable tool for communication, powerful enough to help spur uprisings in the Middle East that have toppled governments" (Holmes)
Twitter problems were plaguing athletes early as well. "As early as 2008, pro and college players were being fined or suspended for their 140-character missives" (Klemko)
Michael Wilbon, a renowned sports journalist who worked for the Washington Post and currently works for ESPN, was the last hold-out in sports journalism. He "long avoided joining the social network, mocking the childish sounding site and professing to be above it" (Marcusa)
In early 2006, a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc., located in South Park, San Francisco, was facing tremendous competition from industry heavyweights, and decided to reinvent themselves (Sagolla)
Clearly, as a form of social media, Twitter is extremely influential. Furthermore, "sports journalism, in particular, seems to be a realm where Twitter has assumed much influence as a journalistic tool, perhaps for such reasons as a highly routinized news cycle and dedicated fan following" (Sears 1)
Present Not only has Twitter changed who is reporting, but it also appears to have changed how people are reporting. Research by Sheffer and Schultz suggests that sports reporters have responded to the introduction of Twitter, not by using at a means of engaging in traditional sports reporting, but by making themselves more like the lay person using twitter (Sheffer and Schultz)
When Chris Henry died of a fall from the back of a truck, which occurred during an alleged domestic dispute, Jay Feely tweeted, "Chris Henry seemed to have turned his life around. But you can't live on the brink of destruction without inevitably falling off the ledge" (Skolnick)
News organizations began reporting Lay's death around 10am EST, within 6 minutes after Wikipedia had an entry labeling his death as "apparent suicide." Within minutes, that phrase was changed to "an apparent heart attack or suicide," and almost immediately to "yet to be determined" (Ahrens, 2006)
1 million in English, with almost all the submissions available for editing by users. It was launched in 2001 and is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the global internet (Baker, 2008)
¶ … Participatory Journalism -- "The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, 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" (Bowman and Willis, 2003)
Most anyone can "read up" on a subject, but lack the rigorous academic analysis required in graduate school -- the pool that forms experts. Individuals may, or may not be, familiar with the latest in scholarship because they may or may not have access to the journals within a given field, or have the time to attend conferences to listen to the new directions and discoveries that academics are paid to pursue (Boyd, 2005)
Of the two and a half million articles in English, nearly half are in the 'entertainment category,' with science and the arts a miserly 6 per cent and 2 per cent respectively. But, significantly, the category "politics and history" is the second most popular at 15 per cent" (Cohen, 2008)
As new books and journals are released, Wikipedia keeps up with the times by ensuring contemporary input. As the author of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century" notes: Part of being global means accessing information globally, "a collaborative encyclopedia sounds like a crazy idea, but it naturally controls itself" for everyone's benefit (Friedman, 2007, 120-21)