Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism is a clunky term that manages to be as open to intepretation as it is controversial. Citizen journalism is most often considered to be people without journalism training reporting the news to a wide audience. There are different definitions of the term as well. Some citizen journalism occurs when people happen upon breaking news and reporting their story. Other accounts come from people who want a different angle of a story covered and take it upon themselves to do so. The term is not limited, to people without journalism training. There are news blogs kept by profesional, trained journalist who want to comment on news stories to cover public reactions to them, because this occours outside a formal news outlet, this ia also considered citizen journalism.

There was a push for more citizen journalism before the internet, thought the web has made it easier for the people from all walks of life to report news. Before the internet this often took the form of independent newpapers or newsletters. But with new technology making it easy for anyone to create a blog or website, citizen journalism has become an important part of news reporting.

Professional careers in journalism generally have a journalim education that intructed them on avoiding plagiarism, how to succinctly report a story, hot to report objectively and journalism echics. Many citizen journalism have not received such training. for this reason, many professionals in the field do not respect citizen journalism as a legitimate field. Other apprecite the new imformation that citizen journalists can provide. Many media outlets, such as CNN, take a moderate view, acceting reports from the public but limiting the amount of the commentary such non trained citizen are allowed.