I could be a blogger. I have stories and columns I've researched and written for the University Daily Kansan. That's not so scary. But. a 12-year old kid by the name of Alex having a blog since the time he was nine years old - that is scary. (Feel free to e-mail your comments about the NBA to him.)
Location is what comes to mind when I think about the differences between bloggers and citizen journalists. Bloggers don't have to be anywhere in particular to post a blog. With less journalism schooling than reporters, citizen journalists better be on the scene of the crime.
When I think of a citizen journalist, instant breaking news comes to mind. I think of a citizen journalist as witnessing Hurricane Katrina and taking a cell phone picture to have as evidence, for example.
I see bloggers in a much more secondary setting, like a home.
They could be the people who did not necessarily witness Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, but still posted their thoughts to the Web on the topic(s). They could also be Alex.
Many bloggers create profiles that tell people more than just age and gender. Profiles could have links to personal diaries such as xanga, which classes the person is enrolled, relationship status, phone numbers and addresses. These people might as well give their social security numbers out while they're at it.
Citizen journalism is more concrete. Someone is witnessing an event unfold.
But should it even be given this name? Mike Gordon of the Poynter Institute said citizen journalism is a bad label and implies that journalists are different than humans.
"'Personal journalism' is probably a more accurate description of the types of content most of its practitioners are creating at this point," Gordon said.
This led me to think of reasons why anyone would want to be a citizen journalist. I doubt they report on breaking news stories because they would like the experience. They likely ran into a situation by sheer coincidence or personally witnessed something unusual happening.
Yahoo recently hired Weblog journalist Kevin Sites to compete with mainstream media outlets on breaking news. He will report exclusively for yahoo - but he is not a citizen journalist. Although he reports by himself, he is a multimedia reporter paid by yahoo. It's his job.
This is why the same skills that define a journalist today will also define a journalist in 2015. Today, a journalist is taught to be fair, accurate, a beige narrator, objective and skeptical. A journalist is taught to report the news and give each or as many sides as possible a voice in the story. This will hold true in 2015. The media will still exist in the form of newspapers. Citizen journalism will not be prevalent because people will simply be too lazy to report breaking news stories if it's not their job or if they are not personally there when it happens.
So read up about Alex's opinions on the NBA in his blog, but realize that a citizen journalist would actually have attended all the games.
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