Does citizen journalism threaten the role of freelance journalists?
Citizen journalists help cover revolutions, offer personal takes on breaking news and tell stories that would otherwise go untold, but how does this impact the role of freelance journalism?
Some journalists' unions think it may be detrimental. When the Guardian launched a new crowdsourcing platform called Guardian Witness, the Chartered Institute of Journalists and the National Union of Journalists voiced their reservations.
“We’ve got no problem with citizen journalism as such, but if they are commissioning people for stories then they’ll be undercutting paid freelance journalists," said ICJ president Charlie Harris.
He likened the Guardian's call for readers to submit text, photographs and video to using unpaid interns. "Just because there are people willing to be unpaid to get their work published, doesn't mean it’s right,” he said.
What do you think? Is it fair that citizen journalists aren't paid for their work? Should freelance journalists be filling the gap in coverage that citizen journalists provide?
Image CC-licensed via Dilip Muralidaran on Flickr.
I think you glossed over this
I think you glossed over this issue with a very short piece that doesn't explain what is citizen journalism compared to freelance and professional journalists. That points out the question that citizen journalist don't know how to report the news and there must be a distinguish when it comes to bloggers. Everybody has an opinion, but that doesn't always make it news.
Does citizen journalism threaten the role of freelance journalis
Citizen journalism does not threaten the role of freelance journalists at all. Both has equal importance in their respective areas.
Manoranjan Panda
Does citizen journalism threaten the role of freelance journalis
good Article. but not just Freelance Journalist will be harmed because newspapers now do prefer to take materials from citizen journalists but it also is harder to new graduate journalists to work in local medias as many of those companies now offer not paying to journalists or photojournalists.
being Citizen-Journalist is not wrong, but jut becoming total open-source Media to escape from paying professional journalists or photographer, is just lower down the level of professional journalism in the corporate matters; also there is a question when citizen journalists are not trained with ethic of Journalism that an experienced or educated Journalist/photojournalist did, how they want to cover the situation in the proper way that a professional journalist, reporter, press photographer and/or videographer do?
Dariel- Press photographer
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