Week 5: Embracing “citizen” journalism

I recall an interview with one of Philippines’ top blogger Abe Olandres. The premise of that interview was this: Should bloggers follow ethical guidelines in journalism?

Abe is a well-read professional blogger writing about technology. He prefers to be called a "meta-journalist," a term that describes his tech punditry. But after reading Mark Glaser's article , I say Abe is a journalist.

No matter how he puts it, Abe is doing journalism. He writes based on facts -- but insists that some are based on "speculations" or better, an informed guess based on industry sources.

As Max Kalehoff, an executive at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, wrote on Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine blog :

Why not just call journalism “journalism” — a word the citizens, amateurs, networks, distributors and professionals can understand? Journalism can be “practiced” in all sorts of ways, and by virtually anyone. You don’t even have to be a citizen or a professional; you could be a foreigner, or even an alien from outer space. But I do agree with your overall beat: journalism is not some exclusive club; it’s something that takes many forms, including all the ones you describe.

Citizen journalism has emerged because of the Internet and blogs. Similar to Dan Gillmor's story on Joe Nacchio, Abe and other local bloggers like J. Angelo Racoma have become sources of my stories. From time to time, they pick up juicy information, which I end up writing as a full-blown news report.

As Gillmor pointed out, citizens like Abe and Racoma are no longer consumers of news. They make the news. They are today's citizen journalists. Gillmor adds:

[T]echnology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.