Reference books

“Media Law Reporter: Decisions.” Bureau of National Affairs Inc. 2003 – 2008.

Media Law Reporter is a sturdy blue binder in the reference section that contains the legal text for various media-related laws and congressional acts. The binder is made in such a way that pages can always be added. The sections are the index digest, tables of cases, and decisions. The decisions section is the largest and begins with citing laws and opinions regarding accessing divorce records and salary information. Journalists must know the law in order to abide by it, but also to know what it can do for them. Much of the rest of the decisions are defamation and copyright cases, which can be particularly useful.

Schwabach, Aaron. “Intellectual Property: A Reference Handbook.” ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Calif.: 2007.

Intellectual property laws are something that every journalist should at least be familiar. In the digital age, information is becoming easier to access and journalists should know what they can and cannot use. There’s a chapter dedicated to international law, which includes a small section on the Internet. One topic that is particularly useful to citizen journalists and bloggers is the question, “Is the look and feel of a Web site copyrightable?” Unfortunately, the judicial system doesn’t accept pleas of ignorance of the law, so everyone publishing content should know their boundaries. Additionally, if a person is publishing content they should also know what protections the law has for them.

Experts

Stewart, Robert. Associate Director for Undergraduate Studies. E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. (740) 593-2601

Dr. Stewart is the co-author of CNN: Making News in a Global Market, co-editor of the Web Journal of Mass Communication Research, and has a particular interest in the new media and media reform. He is knowledgeable in the field of online journalism and easy to contact via e-mail or phone.


DeShano, Cathy. Project Coordinator. Madison Commons Project. School of Journalism & Mass Communication. 5115 Villas Communication Hall. Madison, WI 53706.

Cathy DeShano is the project coordinator of Madison Commons, a citizen journalist project that offers seminars to citizens before they begin reporting. Madison Commons is the primary topic of one of the scholarly articles, which was written by her co-workers, Nak ho Kim and Lew Friedland. DeShano is the point-of-contact for interesting citizen journalists, so she would have a ground-level, working knowledge of the organization and the types of people it attracts.


Sennerud, Dave. Ph.D. student, New Media. E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. (740)

Dave Sennerud is a Ph.D. student focusing in Online Journalism. He completed his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University 1987 and received a Masters in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1996. He has five years experience reporting and 13 years teaching high school. His experience in the field and knowledge of the field through academia make him particularly useful as a subject-matter expert. Additionally, he is easy to contact via phone or e-mail.


McAdams, Mindy. Professor. University of Florida, College of Journalism and Communications, Gainesville, Fla. mmcadams@jou.ufl.edu

Mindy McAdams is professor at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and the author of the Teaching Online Journalism blog. She worked with The Washinton Post’s first online newspaper in 1994. McAdams was working in online journalism before broadband connections. She has seen the evolution of the industry and could provide helpful and interesting insights.


Drizin, Julie. Assistant Director. Knight Citizen News Network, 3201 New Mexico Ave. NW, Ste. 330, Washington, DC, 20016. (202) 885-8100

Julie Drizin is the assistant director of J-Lab in Washington D.C. The goal of J-Lab is to help bridge the gap between citizens and the media. Additionally, it helps train journalists in ways to open a two-way line of communication with the public. Julie primarily has a background in broadcast journalism, most notably with National Public Radio. She would be an excellent source to learn about what the organization is doing toward those goals and what’s to be expected in the future for citizen journalism.

Online reference sites

AEJMC Archives

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication site offers abstracts and papers on virtually any issue currently facing the media industry. Statistical data, dissertations, theses, and articles abound on this site.


EBSCO Host

Most of the search results come not only from journalism magazines, but also scientific journals about sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Anyone who is interesting in the learning about citizen journalism or online journalism can find a great deal of knowledge from academic journals, which are generally accurate, but sometimes hard to follow.

Scholarly articles

Rosenberry, Jack. “Participatory journalism opportunities on major newspapers’ online sites.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Jack Rosenberry presented this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper describes the different kinds of online journalism and their uses in various situations such as Hurricane Katrina and the London bombings. The focus of his paper is more on how major newspapers’ online sites can incorporate citizen journalism without relinquishing all power to the masses. He references the gatekeeper model and says that it can be upheld, but allowing a more participatory form of journalism through the use of the Internet.


Friedland, Lewis A., Hernando Rojas, Christopher Long, Eulàlia Puig Abril, Victoria Hildebrandt, Nak Ho Kim, Eunsun Lee, Seung-Hyun Lee and Yong Jun Shin. “Surveying Citizen Journalism: Describing emerging phenomena that posit a renovation of the public sphere.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Lewis Friedland, et al., submitted this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper defines the concept of citizen journalism based on a logical criteria within the parameters of the standard definitions of publishing, journalism, and the media. The paper uses data from case studies, surveys of citizen journalists and the analysis of the aforementioned to assign the definition. From that data also gauged the general attitude of citizen journalists to governments, corporations, and other institutions. The findings are interesting because citizen journalists often have different goals and motivations for their writing.


Bentley, Clyde H. “Sense of Community as a Driver for Citizen Journalism.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Clyde H. Bentley submitted this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper delves into the reasons why people became citizen journalists in an age where everything is user-driven. Bentley surveyed the people who volunteered as citizen journalists for mymissourian.com. The main draws were politics and interest in the local community. An interesting point he made was his definition of community journalism, which is “a journalist-moderated community blog.”

Online blogs

Bradshaw, Paul. “Online Journalism Blog.” 25 Aug. 2008. 27 Aug. 2008. (http://www.onlinejournalismblogger.com)

Online Journalism Blog is a UK-based blog written by Paul Bradshaw, a senior lecturer in Online Journalism and Magazines at Birmingham City University, UK, four other mentioned authors and a group of “virtual interns.” The site has a wealth of information about the topic of online journalism and many refer specifically to citizen journalism. Its main strength is in the analyses of news related to the online journalism industry at a global level.


McAdams, Mindy. “Teaching Online Journalism.” 28 Aug. 2008. 27 Aug. 2008.
(http://mindymcadams.com/tojou)

Teaching Online Journalism is a blog by Mindy McAdams who is apparently a university professor at an undisclosed location. Her “about” page is sparse. The blog is good though. It takes on many topics about online journalism and not just teaching online journalism. The site has lots of traffic and commentary seems to spring up for many of the posts. In addition to the standard informative news snippets and recent events, there are many how-to guides about starting up a blog or adding small personal touches to the blog. Overall, it’s an excellent resource in online journalism.

Newspaper articles

“Citizen Journalism Project Gains a Voice in the Campaign.” New York Times. July 25, 2008: B1

Offthebus.net has more than 7,500 contributors to its Democratic-sided Web site. Recently, the citizen journalism site has affected the presidential campaign with a writer reporting from a small town about some disparaging remarks by Barack Obama. The post made headlines nationwide when the writer reported Obama’s “bitter” small-town voters comment. The article delves into the beginnings and motivations behind the site and the concept of citizen journalism. It’s interesting to see the examples that show citizen journalism as making a difference in a presidential race.


Cohen, Noam. “Journalism in the Hands of the Neighborhood.” New York Times. March 10, 2008, late ed.: B3

The Internet is ubiquitous in the United States. A vast majority of the population has access to it; therefore, the news is in the hands of the people, according to this article. However, the article claims that the only people able to access this ability to tell the news as he/she sees it are the people with Internet access. Those who are on the other side of the digital divide still have no power. One demographic represented in the article was immigrants – illegal or legal. Often, they are left on the wrong side of the digital divide without the proper equipment to access the Internet or without Internet all together.


Johnson, Steve. “Stamping citizen journalism.” Chicago Tribune. 21 May 2008: B3.

Steve Johnson writes this article primarily in first-person as he walks the reader through a class teaching citizens how to be journalists, thus releasing more trained-citizen journalists into the public. The general tone of the story is rather discouraging because he mentions the lack of involvement or motivation for citizen journalists to write the news. Major news events such as the London bombings or Hurricane Katrina offer plenty of opportunity for citizens take up their pens and cameras and report the news in the absence of trained professionals. However, in the day-to-day life of citizens how do editors keep their volunteer stringers motivated. This side of the story is one that often only arises when a Web site fails (and many do).

Statistically based sources

United States. Census Bureau. Table 1127: Internet Access and Usage and Online Service Usage: 2006.

The Census Bureau’s Internet Access and Usage and Online Service Usage table is an excellent resource to gauge the people who have the Internet. The next statistic has a narrower focus, but the two combined can offer incite into the demographic that is most interesting in Internet news sources. An interesting concept associated with this table is that more than 218 million people have Internet access at home or work. The other category could be a neighbor, family member, or local library. Potentially every one of these people could be a citizen journalist if they chose to do so. The possibilities for the field in this respect become clearer with this data. Journalists can’t be everywhere at once, but each one of these people could carry that torch.


Pew Internet and American Life Project. 24 Aug. 2008. (http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/c/1/topics.asp)

The Pew Internet and American Life Project is a non-partisan organization that researches online activities by Americans. The activities include communication, information gathering, entertainment and transactions. The most relevant to citizen journalism are the statistics about how Americans access their news. Other useful studies include general Internet usage by age group and for what purpose. Applications to online journalism for this information are boundless. News outlets can find out who receives their news from what sources in order to tailor the product to that demographic. This information is also particularly useful for advertising on these Web sites.