Citizen journalism is a relatively new field, with no solid playbook. Practitioners are, to a large extent, making up the rules as they go along, though they are guided by some of the bedrock principles of traditional journalism, like striving for accuracy and fairness, no matter who's doing the writing.

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Where do we look for guidance and at least some good advice if no hard-and-fast rules are available? I look to a pair of this fledgling field's pioneers, Amy Gahran and Chris Willis. Here are some outside-the-box ideas from each of them.

Amy Gahran

Gahran is a writer, blogger, educator/coach and consultant (and occasional provocateur) who's cast her gaze to citJ in the last couple years. Along with Adam Glenn, she writes the I Reporter blog, which covers the citJ world. She also writes a blog called The Right Conversation, which often intersects with the citJ world, and a longer-running blog, Contentious.

Citizen ad reps: Here's an innovative idea from Gahran. CitJ practitioners are already working to encourage everyday people to share their stories and to become amateur reporters. What's in it for them is usually only the satisfaction of sharing their knowledge with their communities -- and maybe occasionally a little money or other modest reward. So how about training community members to be citizen ad representatives?

This can give anyone who wants to sell an ad into a citJ Web site an opportunity to facilitate a sale and earn a commission for the effort. They might not actually make the sale, but they'd provide the solid lead and get a commission. Or they might actually complete the transaction if the ad-sales process was entirely automated. Citizens who blog on your site might sell ads specifically into their blogs, sharing the revenue with the Web site.

There are lots of possibilities with this concept. The premise is that, just as citizens can be tapped to provide coverage of a local community, touching on topics that traditional reporters miss or don't find important, so too can members of the community be trained to sell advertising, and share in the rewards.

Pledge-drive citJ: Gahran also thinks that some in-depth reporting could be done by groups of citizen reporters with a professional journalist leading the effort. Community members interested in seeing the topic investigated could be recruited to contribute both their expertise in the topic and even money to fund the project. Or interested institutions or organizations could be found to donate funds.

As an example, let's say that a local newspaper doesn't have the resources to do an investigation on local water quality. So it organizes a "pledge drive" to raise money from the community (individuals and organizations), then invites community members to pitch in to the effort.

The overall idea is to tap community resources. If a newspaper, say, doesn't have the wherewithal to pull off a significant investigation, then it can seek out help from the community -- both for money to fund a valuable project and for assistance in the actual reporting.

Chris Willis

Willis is the co-author of "We Media," a thorough examination of citJ first published in 2004 by the Media Center and revised into a We Media 2.0 report to be published soon. With We Media co-author Shayne Bowman, Willis also publishes and writes Hypergene Mediablog, which mostly deals with participatory media (a.k.a. citJ).

Share the wealth: Willis thinks that citJ operators need to be thinking more about how to compensate people who contribute content. Revenue-sharing models could be devised, so that there's some incentive beyond being a citizen reporter for personal satisfaction and a little bit of public visibility.

But Willis suggests that cash be the last thing you try. Instead, give people who contribute a report to your citJ site something of value, like access to a newspaper Web site article archive -- which normally would cost something -- or other premium online services or content.

With citizen compensation, there's of course the issue of people gaming the system in order to get the benefits. Willis suggests implementing reputation systems on citizen content, where readers rank citizen-submitted content on a five-star scale, for example -- only those who score above a threshold quality rating earn benefits. Or volunteer moderators can serve the role of deciding who deserves benefits.

Ask and you shall receive: You can probably think of some great services that are just too expensive to pull off using traditional methods. For instance, a great bars database would have not only customer reviews of various facilities, but also information about hours of operation and other details like whether they serve food, have big-screen TVs, pool tables, etc. While a business directory service, with bar owners submitting information, will catch some of that, a community-wide effort encouraging bar patrons to submit data can provide a more comprehensive database.

Willis thinks that this type of example will go over well with "citizen reporters" who will be happy to share information about their favorite hangouts. And once such a database is built, new forms of advertising can be sold around it. For example, a search for a bar could turn up those that are currently open and highlight those offering free-drink coupons.

As citJ evolves, publishers will need to think creatively.