Citizen Journalism

Citizen Journalism is that people without professional journalism training but they can use new technology and their intelligent to find the truth about the news or new events. By taking survey of professional media, we are actually part of citizen journalism, because the assignments that we have in this class make us to fact-check the media and find out about the latest news or events. Not only we have to keep up-to-date with the news but also we have to share our opinion and idea into it in blogs. Sometimes, I open two or three websites that tells the same events or stories about something because I just want to get the truth about that news.

In my opinion, citizen Journalism is important thing for us, especially our generation. Generation Y always depend on new technology and with that ability we can get the news faster than previous generation. Moreover, we want to share our opinion and idea to the public about the current events or news.

However, there is some controversy concerning the term of Citizen Journalism, because many professional journalists believe that they can’t do their job correctly without any training program and learning code of ethics to become a journalist. They also worried about losing their job because most audience prefers to read citizen journalism’s stories rather than their stories. I agree with the professional journalists because people without knowledge in journalism doesn’t know about what things that you can or can’t publish in the media and also they doesn’t about the communication law that could bring big trouble for them if they disobey it. There were many citizen journalism that have to go to Supreme Court because the other party sued them for what they were said or published.


When it comes to citizen journalism history, Dan Gilmor could be considered the pioneer of this term because he wrote the first blog at a newspaper website, while he was a columnist in San Jose news. The blog is believed as the traditional media by many journalists. He also wrote a book called “We the Media.” That talked about the history of journalism. He shared a lot about his opinion and his success in journalism industry in this book.

Citizen journalism also can get their message faster than any other media sources. For example, when the bomb explodes at Bali, Indonesia in 2005, a local tourist caught the events with his video camera that he always brings it with him. The news and video about the bomb in Bali spread faster to us than the media. This is only one example that citizen journalism is really important to us and I believe there are a lot more events that citizen journalism caught in the scene before the media did. However, with the new technology that keeps growing nowadays, it will makes citizen journalism can work better and faster in order to get that message out to the audience.