"BBC gears up for citizen reporters," its headline read. The article was about the BBC responding to a massive rise in submissions from "citizen journalists" by doubling the size of the team that deals with them.

According to the Press Gazette story, the BBC now receives around 10,000 e-mails a day, 10 times more than a year ago, and has six staff dedicated to "scanning the contributions, filtering out likely interviewees for news reports and feeding pictures and video clip to editors."

One catalyst for this "user-generated content unit" was the series of bombings last July in London. Such high-profile incidents encouraged thousands of Britons to flood the BBC with video images taken by cellphones and digital cameras.

On the other side of the world, a ground-breaking South Korean website, OhmyNews.com, recently announced plans to expand its unique form of "participatory journalism" internationally.

Already, more than 30,000 readers in South Korea have registered to be "citizen reporters" for the website. They write about 200 stories a day, roughly 80 per cent of the site’s content. In the South Korean context, OhmyNews.com is credited with taking on controversial stories other mainstream Korean news organizations have shied away from.

Well, it certainly means change. Change in the way that people are becoming part of the news process — and demanding that they become so. Change in the way that technology is now making this remarkably easy. And change — in ways we haven’t entirely figured out — in how journalists at established news organizations interact with their audiences.

For a long time, journalists have talked about creating a "partnership" with their audiences. But for the most part, it was just that. Talk. From our perch high on Mount Olympus, or even higher if we could manage it, We Talked. And You Listened. Or at least that was supposed to be what happened.

Now, news organizations are not only flooded with challenging letters, phone calls and e-mails as part of the regular daily news process. Increasingly, during moments of great crises or high-profile news events, our audiences send us their own stories and images too.

This hasn’t come completely out of the blue. There is an early history to it. Newspapers, particularly with local news and sports, have traditionally encouraged readers to contribute stories that mattered to them.

And at CBC Radio and Television, some of our finest programming has come from outside contributors. Outfront on CBC Radio, is now in its ninth season of helping listeners craft their own documentaries, and CBC Newsworld — with Rough Cuts and now CBC News: The Lens — has been a showcase for new directors since 1994.

But today’s pattern is dramatically different, both in scale and content. A lot of people, particularly young people, now feel that journalism shouldn’t be the private preserve of journalists. And they’re doing something about it.

That certainly was the message of last week’s cover story in Newsweek magazine. It was titled: "Putting the ‘We’ in Web ... User-Generated Sites are Rocking the Internet," and featured on the cover the two Canadian co-founders of a popular photo-sharing website called Flickr.com.

A similar message has been coming through at CBC.ca. Triggered by audience interest in the federal election and the Olympics in Turin, CBC.ca has been Canada’s number one news site for the past three months.

Among several features encouraging reader contributions, one titled Riding Talk focused on what residents and candidates were talking about at the local riding level. During the campaign, more than 10,000 reader comments were published. That’s an amazing number.

An important part of this feature was that several experienced journalists read the submissions before they were published to ensure they were relevant and on-topic. As with the BBC’s new "user-generated content unit," this was a way of bringing some journalistic rigour to the process.

In the days ahead, as the frequency of these contributions increase, the challenge for established newspapers, broadcast networks and websites is to come up with ways of harnessing the power and wisdom of the audience in a way that adheres to professional ethics and accepted journalistic policy.

In other words, a genuine partnership — and one that is more methodical than simply tossing people small cameras or microphones and then wishing for the best.

After all, this wonderful world of the internet, with parts of it shrouded as much in anonymity as diversity, does have its dark side.

Last Friday’s Financial Times reported that 200,000 "objectionable" users of MySpace, one of the most popular community websites among young people in the world, had to be purged from the site because of "hate speech."

This is a reminder, as if we needed one, that not everyone is ready for prime time.

Your Comments


April 10, 2006 \| 10:07 PDT	Ian McTavish	Canoe, B.C.
Thank you for your comments. It is an important issue, but I suspect important from a different perspective from what you and other envision. I say this because the goal of a modern democracy, especially one with limited and effective checks and balances built-in such as has this country, has to be an empowered citizenry. We must tap into this to reduce the cynicism and empower, then we will have an effective check on the power of government. Idealistic, but it is increasingly realistic. There likely is very little we can call the 'truth' given that it depends upon one's perspective, nearly always. There is however something that we can do with this tool, the internet. This is to encourage the free dissemination of ideas and viewpoints. This is very valuable because it points out just how well-versed we all are from our own perspective. It points out that there are countless persons in this country who see through the nonsense of mainstream media, government and the high and mighty. It empowers and provides a source for all to express their views in a way which will lead to greater wisdom for us all. Of course, it will depend upon the accurate and in-depth providing of information to the public, something someone like Mr. Harper does not like because it reduces his control over any situation and what politician worth his blue stripe would like that?! So, it seems to me, that the most encouraging development in recent years is the encouraging of responses by news services such as yours by the citizenry. Sure the uninformed, opinionated, brainwashed, etcetera, disturbs, but at least it is seen for what it is. That is why you have editors. It would appear to be an easy thing to organize every contribution into categories and to employ persons who could engage those contributors in further discussion to get to the nub of this issues presented. Thank you.
April 6, 2006 \| 14:26 EDT	Old media guy	Georgia, USA
Citizen journalism, if done right and given proper guidance and attention, can be wonderful, allowing the public to get involved with the MSM and making it more transparent. Otherwise, it will wind up being mere citizen opinion. The problem is that most news organizations don't want to make the proper investments in development and training in their regular staffs, much less citizen journalists. I am a young journalist (I would give my real name but I would get into serious trouble if I did) at a newspaper. My young, 20-something, Gen Y peers "get it" that we must do more to change our organization from a mere newspaper to a true 24-7 news operation that still investigates, but is very aggressive to get news up and online fast, and in new and diverse ways. The older boomer-generation reporter and editors are incredibly cynical and are afraid. I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall when I try to do something innovative, because it requires money to do so. I'm not sure what the Canadian experience is with all of this, but media organizations big and small worldwide need to pay attention to the Web and see the possibilities it allows.
April 6, 2006 \| 12:33 EDT	Barbara J Grant	Kanata
The rise in the so called "citizen journalists" is a direct result of the publics search for the truth. We are hard pressed to find this in newspapers, on television,or,radio. I believe most Canadians have tuned out as news is slanted by journalists who decide what we need to know and from their point of view, instead of just telling the news and let us decide what it means. This is evident today as the outcry by members of the NDP and other citizens increases regarding our soldiers in Afghanistan. Former Defence Minister Graham and General Hillier could not have been more clear in 2005, what this mission entailed. They travelled the country with the message. However, the press has done a disservice to Canadians by pretending that the information was either,missed by Canadians,or,not clearly understood. Who has the responsibility to deliver the news clearly and truthfully that is already in our domain? This information should have been rediscussed, reprinted, videos replayed until the public understood what was previously told to them about this mission. I have yet to see or hear the press in any form explain all the details regarding this mission from 2005.
April 5, 2006 \| 17:39 EDT	Richard Baxter	Toronto
Part of accepting the material produced by "citizen journalists" means also that we accept similar contributions by corporate shills and PR people who masquerade as journalists. This means that there must be controls, if the material to be broadcast can be considered at all trustworthy. (I assume the goal is to improve our access to "truth" and "reality," right?) One of the benefits of having public broadcasters, it seems to me, is that such organizations are one step further removed from the interests that might make the resulting narrative less objective than would otherwise be ideal. While it's certainly true that reaching out to everyone with a camera phone could increase the reach of objective journalism, it's also true that such an expansion of news gathering would make it easier to hide in plain sight. Thus, I suggest we are not on the verge of citizen-driven "hyper reality," but are instead in need of better gatekeepers. Technologies like Slash (see e.g., www.slashdot.org) can give that power to the community, but there is still no guarantee that the resulting "news" is "true." It might simply be cool: just because Roland Emerich blew up the White House in ID4 doesn't mean it actually happened. And when I see buildings coming down, I want to make sure the names given as being responsible are actually the ones who did the deed. For that, you need a professional. But, then again, viewers of Fox News didn't know who attacked the World Trade Centre... so maybe amateurs with camera phone could do a better job. (But who's to say?)
April 4, 2006 \| 21:32 EDT	Bill Yetman	Brampton, ON
Pardon my cynicism, but isn't the sticking point exactly "professional ethics and accepted journalistic policy"? Given that mainstream media are largely viewed as co-opted or compromised by the political views of their ownership/management, the advertisers/big business to which they are beholden, or outright manipulation by governmental PR machinery, aren't "ethics" and "policy" really euphemisms for "state-sanctioned sanitation"? Doubleplusungood! Congratulations to Big Media for reaching out to a new and relatively important new media - but idealism aside, these may prove to be oil and water.
April 4, 2006 \| 13:30 ADT	S. McCabe	Tatamagouche, N. S.
Dear Mr. Burman, I hope that CBC journalists, as well as newspaper journalists, will dig and dig and dig to find out why Mr. Harper is so secretive. Just what is this man doing to Canada, and why are Canadians being treated with such disdain?
April 4, 2006 \| 13:25 EDT	Ron Sopher	Lindsay, Ontario
I can certainly agree, "that not everyone is ready for primetime." I wish you the best with any effort to include citizen input, though Canada does seem to be very boring in regard to news content. It is sort of like we are asleep in this area.
April 5, 2006 \| 02:06 EDT	Sheila Richardson	Toronto
If I were the boss of everything, heres what I would tell the mass media of Canada to do to encourage a more mutually rewarding interaction with citizens: Entice the citizens with perks that do not necessarily cost you anything--for example, media passes, and non-cash prizes donated by industry or colleges. Invite contributions to a particular program that covers a prearranged topic. Reward the adventurous and the promising with special recognition on air. Offer editorial guidance and support. Loan out camera equipment. Provide low-cost task-related training on all aspects of journalism. Send citizens as well as, or even instead of, in-house people on well-defined assignments but with open-ended expectations about what they will find. Invite citizens from other countries to co-produce a segment with citizens of Canada. Offer translation. Ensure that a free contribution of information is rewarded with some longevity and recognition through an easily accessible archiving system which could also be made available for free to any contributor. Meanwhile, make more repeat broadcasts of programs available on the internet. Publish excerpts. Consider extending the traditional book-publishing model into the world of broadcast journalism. Reserve permanent positions for writers who handle the daily grind, but mostly run with external authors who are paid with generous royalties and consulting or speaking engagements that emerge following publication. This is a much closer relationship with externals than a freelance one, but less than a relationship where someone is put on retainer. Become a master of e-learning and knowledge transfer. Encourage study groups and project teams. Help the world make what is now only linear communication, such as discussion groups and photo swaps and this blog, into multi-dimensional and multi-media exchanges. Weve already started changing the world. So please, Mr Burman, please now help us to light it up.
April 3, 2006 \| 12:12 MDT	Damien	Edmonton
Dear Mr. Burman, RE: Citizen Journalism In your piece you fail to mention the biggest reason why the number of "citizen journalists" have been steadily rising. The mainstream media has consistently failed to deliver accurate, fact-based news and has instead focused on opinion, often disguised as real news using questionable techniques to frame stories. With the growing popularity of alternative news sources, the MSM will have to re-focus on providing actual news coverage or fall by the wayside. Sincerely, Damien Meardi
April 3, 2006 \| 15:37 PDT	web journalist	Canada
The rise in amateur journalism has also been driven by the disgusting perversion of the truth carried out by Western Corporation and Government controlled 'News'. News is Not anymore, and we as the new youth of this country are increasingly forced to hunt in every corner for the jigsaw of reality, fragmented by our own media organizations. The current flag waving going on for our troops in Afghanistan, for example going on by you and your CBC team. How strange it was, to see how quickly the CBC changed it's tune, nearly overnight, as the new Convervative government took charge! Now we are awash with Support the Troops editorials, letters from the front, human interest stories about wounded troops. Any talk of just what the hell we are doing there, and what our aims are, and what is the story about oil and opium in that country? are completely drowned out by a sea of state driven propaganda to demonstrate our new love and support of our US friends. You sicken me, CBC. You have become nearly as bad as the current BBC state propaganda machine.
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