E-Media Tidbits

Attached as a comment to an item posted earlier this week by Amy Gahran is a suggestion (by Washingtonpost.com's Lindsay Howerton) that I want to highlight, in case you missed it. On the topic of "citizen journalism," Howerton suggests that we consider the idea of "tiers" in community feedback settings.

What this might mean is that news organizations would start training the public in how to be citizen journalists, perhaps by offering online courses, or even in-person seminars. By completing these courses or seminars, a citizen reporter could then receive some sort of elevated status when posting. Howerton suggests that this gives people something to strive for while at the same time "educating them toward more balanced submissions."

This is the kind of thinking we need to be doing in the news business right now. Things are evolving on the Internet such that community contributions (a.k.a., citizen journalism) are an important area of experimentation. No one really knows how this will turn out, but I think it's safe to say that we'll have better community news websites if we offer some sort of voluntary training to interested citizens.

What would we in the news business teach them? The basics, to start -- from how to write a simple news story, to basic ethical standards, to how to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to public documents and what the public has a right to see.

I can imagine how members of the public who are interested and have a knack for writing and reporting might climb up the tiers, perhaps with the best being elevated to quasi-freelancer status and even getting paid for their contributions. The best of those might even graduate to become the equivalent of professional freelance writers that most news organizations use -- sort of a farm-team system, if you will.