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Are you a citizen journalist?

There's been a lot of debate about citizen journalism recently. The idea is that with new mobile technology and web applications anyone can become a news reporter. Citizen journalism provides a great opportunity for charities to play a role in setting the news agenda, and a chance for you to make your own news.

What is citizen journalism?

Audiences are now beginning to play a role in creating the media which once they were only allowed to passively consume.  Mainstream media outlets and broadcasters are rapidly developing new ways for 'citizens' to produce and share their own news content.

  • Send "as it happens" video footage or photographs of an event to a news broadcaster.
  • With new high quality mobile phones, anyone can be a paparazzo or local correspondent. Scoopt is a new citizen journalism agency.
  • Produce and share video footage or photos on media outlet's websites and other content sharing sites (like YouTube).
  • Blogging. Share your personal opinions, observations and experiences on the Internet. Comment on other people's blogs and initiate debate. More on this in Blog On.

For inspiration have a look at the Citizen Journalism Awards.

Remember that once you've uploaded your content onto a content sharing website or sent it to a media outlet, you usually relinquish your rights to the material/ content. 

For more advice on how to produce video for the web have a look at the ICT Hub's online guide.  

Where can you send your news?

These are the main citizen journalism sites run by national newspapers: 

Local media outlets are particularly keen to use more content sent from their readers and viewers. For example, Trinity Mirror has launched five local citizen journalism sites for Teeside.

Google have also launched a new kind of news participation. It's a right to reply service for the people who are actually involved in the latest news stories. Send an email to news-comments@google.com they will publish your response alongside the news story.

 

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