Life is sweetly ironic sometimes. While gathering my thoughts about citizen journalism and the world of wiki, I went to Wikipedia to see what it had to say on the subject. The first paragraph read as follows:
"Citizen journalism,Abandons objectivity and ethics. CITIZEN JOURNALISM SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! Also known as public or participatory journalism, is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis."
Video: Amelia Freidline
So if citizen journalism was defined according to Wikipedia and Wikipedia was citizen journalism, then I wouldn't even be blogging about this because the site would be illegal and therefore would probably not exist. But back to the point.
An encyclopedia is a reference work. Its articles are written by experts in science, history, etc. -- specialists in their particular fields of study. Experts don't come easily or cheap, however, which is why encyclopedias like the Britannica cost a lot or charge a fee for the online version. Wikipedia is free and just a mouse-click away, but you don't necessarily get that level of expertise. In fact, despite recent innovations in the editing and fact-checking parts of Wikipedia, you don't necessarily even know if the information is accurate.
News is what's happening right now. It's fresh, it's current, and, yes, sometimes it's dished out by ordinary citizens. This is usually the case in scenarios like 9/11 where something is happening that can't be completely covered by trained journalists, or events like Little League games that aren't so crucial that someone would feel the need to falsify or skew the facts.
We wouldn't pick up an encyclopedia to read about last night's sports scores, would we? Neither would we buy the morning paper expecting to find lengthy articles about Frank Lloyd Wright, the history of brain surgery or the War of 1812. In my opinion, Wikipedia is neither truly an encyclopedia nor an act of journalism. It is an entity unto itself -- it's "wiki."
Was the music for the vid from "The Omen"?
No, it's actually from The Lord of the Rings. I think it's the opening music from The Fellowship.
It was very dark. I had to go in just now and publish your comment while cleaning up another one. Don't know why it didn't go through.