Wrong.

To be objective is to be fair. As well, I could care less about offending an advertiser.

It isn’t about offending the public either, it is about giving them options. With a neutral stance people can form their own opinions.

That is my opinion.

From Wikipedia:

Citizen journalism, also known as public or participatory journalism, is the act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,” according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. They say, “The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”[1] Citizen journalism should not be confused with civic journalism, which is practiced by professional journalists. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.

In a 2003 Online Journalism Review article, J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types: 1) Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community), 2) Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report), 3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (OhmyNews), 4) Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin), (Newsvine), 5) Other kinds of “thin media.” (mailing lists, email newsletters), and 6) Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as (KenRadio).[2]

Dan Gillmor, former technology columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, is one of the foremost proponents of citizen journalism, and founded a nonprofit, the Center for Citizen Media, to help promote it. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s French-language television network has also organized a weekly public affairs program called, “5 sur 5″, which has been organizing and promoting citizen-based journalism since 2001. On the program, viewers submit questions on a wide variety of topics, and they, accompanied by staff journalists, get to interview experts to obtain answers to their questions.

Chase is right about what is happening to traditional media in the US, which makes bloggers more valuable than ever to the public discourse.

Typically, the reporters that are covering school board press conferences, especially in today’s corporate media environment are going to be the kids just out of journalism school and on the low end of the totem pole. They are not going to have the breadth of understanding of the issues, much less the my-ox-being-gored motivation to comprehensively understand the issues and the questions which need to be asked of Hinton et.al.

“Most bloggers, especially what I’ve seen from Peoria, do a very bad job of interpreting the facts.”

An interpretation of facts is generally subjective, so who is to say that one’s “interpretation” is more accurate than someone elses. Isn’t it all a matter of perspective? In my business if you give 3 people the same set of facts it would not be unusual to get 3 different opinions.

Take the current D150 situation as an example. Given the same set of facts, 2 different factions have vastly opposing points of view. See this thread:

http://peoriachronicle.com/2008/05/31/d150-taking-a-look-at-the-research-in-context/

All that being said, I still do not consider myself in any way, shape or form a journalist. That doesn’t mean, however, that I didn’t consider it petty and shortsighted to ban me from the public unveiling of Hintons new plan. We all want the same things for our kids, don’t we?

1. Blogs are not the media. Receiving a few press releases here and there does not consitute calling yourself the media, nor does attending city council meetings.
2. Bloggers are not the public press.
3. Bloggers don’t write news, they write opinion
4. Most bloggers, especially what I’ve seen from Peoria, do a very bad job of interpreting the facts.
5. Bloggers MIGHT write to appeal or to current popular taste, but they write to their own interest, not the entire publics.

Big difference between blogger and journalist. Please don’t intertwine the two! Blogs serve the purpose of presenting public opinion, and sharing your own stories, and keeping the public well informed of the issues you are most interested in and the opinion you have about those issues. However, the media’s job is to keep the public informed on all issues and do it without bias.

Do we need a state law making all “press conferences” open? I foresee problems with that. I think public scorn and ridicule might be a more elegant solution. After all, when was the last time a public body was prosecuted in any way for violating the laws we have now?

Diane: I beg to differ. A “citizen journalist” is not defined only as someone who sits at his/her home computer trying to produce an imitation of the daily newspaper or new broadcast. Citizen journalists are those people who publish on the Internet information and insights on newsworthy topics. They doesn’t have to be “objective,” nor do their posts have to be written in the style newspapers and broadcasters follow. Citizen journalism is often intensely personal and focus on the issues of concern to the blogger. I many ways it’s MORE honest than newspaper and broadcast journalist, because the biases are up front.