Citizen Journalism: Journalism as a Public conversation

Journalism is a difficult profession, word, idea to define.

Journalism plays a pivotal role in the management of cultural goods and contributes and influences 'consensus' and culture.Meadows (2008, set text, Chapter 3;47) states that "fundamental to this argument is the notion of journalism as a cultural practice that effectively manages the flow of information and ideas in society". This then raises the argument that shouldn't journalism be a form of public communication for sustainable democracy? Or does journalism need to move beyond this? Beyond their fourth estate and watchdog role?

The view of citizen journalism and public conversation is basically that works are written by the people, for the people, about the people. That is it is the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. Or as Jay Rosen said, citizen journalists are the people formerly known as the audience, who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."

The question is, is this the new way of the future? And what does this mean for 'professional' journalists?

Technology has contributed to the up rise in this form of journalism as it allows more people access and availability to others to have public conversation. With the internet has come the developments of blogs and this was one issue discussed in class. Are bloggers considered citizen journalists if they are making comments, or writing about societies issues? Of great concern in our class discussion was, will this lower the current standard and expectation of 'professional' journalists? I guess we'll just have to wait and see...