How to be a Citizen Reporter

It’s no secret that mainstream and big media is receding and Citizen Journalism is growing. YouTube and other video sharing sites are a big reason, as are cell phone cameras and video recorders which make it easy to capture anything. With Facebook and Twitter, such news can be disseminated faster than radio or TV ever dreamed of, as we’ve been seeing in all the cell phone video that has come from Iran lately..

The issue of Citizen Journalism, though, is quality. How can Citizen Journalism become, well, less irresponsible and more professional, even though those doing it are, indeed, amateurs?

To help, YouTune has just launched a pretty impressive new channel called the Reporter’s Center for Citizen Journalism that teaches how to report the news. It features some of the nation’s top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.

The training is spot on. From Katie Couric to Bob Woodward to the Associated Press and even the Pulitzer Center, there are tips on how to shoot and compose video, what elements to include in your “story,” and how to distribute and publicize it as you build your own channel, or advocate your cause.

I’m almost weekly amazed at some of the great material I find on YouTube. I can’t tell you when is the last time I’ve sat down to watch a local TV newscast. Same with the nightly network broadcasts. I do, though, start my day, and visit several times, the YouTube video news channel, that features some of the best news videos from all sources, national, international and local. See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/news. It’s all pretty much there, isn’t it?

Citizen Journalism, first on blogs and increasingly on video, has become a significant supplement to the news I’ve been consuming lately.

Most of my media professional pals cringe at the Citizen Journalist term. They equate it with bias, sloppiness, advocacy and unreliable hearsay. Doctors call those who practice medicine with no professional training quacks. Many reporters who earn their living as journalists look on Citizen Journalists the same way. Bottom line, though, is that like it or not, as newspapers collapse and TV audiences fragment and dwindle, Citizen Journalism is here to stay. That’s why YouTube’s Citizen Journal Training Center is something to be applauded.

But the move towards helping develp quality Citizen Hournalism isnt restricted to YouTube.

I’m a board member of an outfit known as CMNtv, or the Community Media Network, a cable access group that serves 11 communities in Southeastern Michigan. We’ve just partnerned with The Oakland Press newspaper to hold a series of Citizen Journalism news gathering seminars for Citizen Journalists who will “cover” local high school sports events, community activities and the like. Topics covered will include basic journalism, news writing and media law, as well as technical skills related to videography.

Those finished stories will then be shown on the Oakland Press and CMNtv websites.

Here’s a newspaper that “gets it.” They help train citizen reporters on how to make good TV-style reports, they get the content to share with their own readers and our communities have more local news being reported.

CMNtv also provides extensive multi-week training sessions to anyone who want it on how to shoot and edit video, do multi-camera switching, produce, write and develop programing.

Call it DIY news. But it’s born out of necessity. As traditional media keeps laying off staff, cutting local coverage and all but abandoning home newspaper delivery, there isn’t much of an alternative.

Citizen Journalism is a good thing that’s only going to get better.