Citizen Journalism

Ability to report freely has become a casualty in the ongoing battle for control over Gaza between rival Hamas and Fatah groups. From raids on news establishments and rampant abductions of journalists, to use of Press markings on vehicles by combatants, all have made reporting riskier than before in a conflict that draws some of the world's most intense media coverage. Dozens of armed members of...

(RSF/IFEX) - Madrid investigating judge Santiago Pedraz announced on 24 May 2007 that he has rejected an appeal by the prosecutor’s office against his decision to indict three US soldiers for the murder of Spanish cameraman José Couso, who was killed when a US tank shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003. Prosecutor Jesús Alonso had appealed against the indictment on the grounds...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. With blogging flourishing and citizen journalism just budding, Mark Potts and Susan DeFife thought they had a winning formula for a new kind of journalistic enterprise. One evening in the summer of 2004, they sketched out their common vision: A series of hyperlocal, news-oriented Web sites whose tone and content--news, commentary, blogs, photos, calendar...

CHICAGO: The Chicago Tribune has launched a community journalism Web site encouraging readers in nine suburbs to post their own unedited articles, photos and blogs. "This started with the question of how can we make the paper more relevant to readers who continue to live further and further away from the center city," said Ted Biedron, president of the Tribune division that designed the site. The...

As the attack by a deranged gunman unfolded at Virginia Tech on Monday, one thing became increasingly clear: In many ways, and for a growing number of people, blogs and wikis -- and Facebook and MySpace -- are the new CNN. In the same way that reporters for the TV news network became a symbol of a new age, as they crouched on the rooftop of the Baghdad Hilton with their satellite phones while...

During the Easter weekend, Cedar City saw a strong example of citizen journalism. Darin Bloomfield, an SUU student, upon seeing a SWAT vehicle with its lights flashing cruising through his neighborhood, grabbed a video camera and began taping. When he realized he had something significant, he contacted various news organizations and provided the footage to them. The University Journal editorial...

Web news search site Topix, owned by three top US newspaper publishers Monday began recruiting users to report local news that traditional outlets do not sufficiently cover. Topix’s platform addresses the pent-up demand for local news in towns and cities across the country where traditional news media alone cannot cover enough of the hyper-local events and issues that matter most to neighbours. As...

OhmyNews introduced the world to "citizen journalism" -- breaking news, investigative reporting, tales of daily life, written by thousands of amateurs all over South Korea. But now the online newspaper finds itself in the throes of change. After having turned a small profit for three years, OhmyNews slid into the red in 2006. It faces growing competition in South Korea, has failed to catch fire...

A free web portal to help both citizens and journalists create and responsibly operate community news sites launched Monday with an array of learning and resource modules contributed by a network of participants. The Knight Citizen News Network (KCNN) seeks to help build capacity for citizens who want to start their own news ventures and to open the doors to citizen participation for traditional...

NYU professor Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.net and Wired News have launched an attempt to bring together professional writers and editors with citizen journalists to collaborate on reporting and writing about the rise of crowdsourcing on the Web. Inspired by the open source movement, the goal of Assignment Zero, as the project is called, is to develop a working model of an open newsroom. “An...