Citizen Journalism and Motivation

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about citizen journalism and the changing landscape of media. A majority of the thinking has been around one central thought: are citizen journalists really doing any reporting that doesn’t directly reflect their own personal agenda or interests? One of the greatest things about journalism is reporters are supposed to be objective, and even though they may hate going to city council meetings, they still report the news. So as the PI goes to an online only format and reduces it’s news staff from 165 to 20, I can’t help but wonder what the quality of news will be. I want to say great, but who’s going to ask, “what’s you’re agenda and personal gain if writing a free blog for us?” They need the content too bad, and have no money to pay a reporter to get it.

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