Citizen Journalism

By Michelle Burke

As a student at Lasell College, you may think of yourself as a regular, average person who does not have much say in what the media informs the public on. Perhaps it is time to think again, because the current rise in citizen journalism is turning average everyday people into journalists.

Citizen Journalism is a trend seen currently across the nation, in which average Americans are taking it upon themselves to share pictures, videos, stories and quotes to their peers online. CNN even launched a website, iReport, allowing anyone online to upload current events that they see take place. The news they are delivering, although sometimes biased and untrue, is information made accessible by the public. These citizen journalists have delivered the majority of the news on the current Occupy Wall Street movement, for example. Such information delivered by real people in the moment,  is a view on the event that a journalist may not be able to present.

As new technology continues to advance, readers will become more open to the ideas of a citizen report, and perhaps prefer it. Journalists are professionally trained to write in an unbiased, professional tone. However, citizen journalists can provide to the reader what any other trained professional may not be able to. The question that rises is, will journalists continue to keep their jobs or will citizen journalism take over the job of an actual trained professional?

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