I would agree with this post, for the most part, if not for the fact that many mass-media "professional" journalists fail to meet the criteria outlined here.
Your criticism is certainly correct. I see more articles that seem to be light edits of someone else's PR releases.
He's also guilty of a strawman argument. In picking CNN's iReports (whatever that is), and then dismissing it, he ignores the vast, vast majority of "citizen journalism". But that's not even a proper example of the phenomenon: it's still speaking through CNN's mouthpiece.
And that reveals one of the critical elements of citizen journalism, and one the OP ignores: that it's not subject to the editorial biases of established media. Nobody will say "that's irrelevant", or "we can't print that criticism of our advertiser".
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I would agree with this post, for the most part, if not for the fact that many mass-media "professional" journalists fail to meet the criteria outlined here.
Your criticism is certainly correct. I see more articles that seem to be light edits of someone else's PR releases.
He's also guilty of a strawman argument. In picking CNN's iReports (whatever that is), and then dismissing it, he ignores the vast, vast majority of "citizen journalism". But that's not even a proper example of the phenomenon: it's still speaking through CNN's mouthpiece.
And that reveals one of the critical elements of citizen journalism, and one the OP ignores: that it's not subject to the editorial biases of established media. Nobody will say "that's irrelevant", or "we can't print that criticism of our advertiser".