E-Media Tidbits

Check out this great little video promotion of h2otown, a "citizen-journalism" (or grassroots media or your-name-for-it here) website covering Watertown, Massachusetts. It's a two-minute explanation of what the site is all about, and I think it's great.

h2otown was founded by Lisa Williams, who is described on the site as a woman "who lives with her husband and two children in East Watertown." She created the site so that news from her community that doesn't get covered by area TV news or newspapers is shared with the community by people who witnessed uncovered news events. (As the video describes as an example: What was that explosion we heard last night before the power went out?)

What this makes me think is that small independent initiatives like this will drive the citizen-journalism movement for a while. What's scary to mainstream news companies -- losing control of the editorial product to a citizenry that can write whatever they want -- is simply a fun project for a motivated town resident.

Here's how I think this will play out: We'll see a wave of independent sites playing with the citizen-as-reporter concept, and some of them will become quite successful. (The first true example of this already has happened: Ohmynews.) Meanwhile, newspapers and a smaller number of TV-news operations will experiment, as well, but some of the community-driven ones will see more success (in the same way that Craigslist has come to give newspaper classifieds a serious run for their money) because they're not beholden to old ways of doing journalism. Then, down the road, mainstream media companies will come to truly accept and embrace the concept, and acquire some of the best independents.

Do you think I'm right? Or will mainstream news companies grasp the importance of citizen/grassroots media soon enough to do it right at the same time as entrepreneurs and enthusiasts?