Allvoices Allows Anyone to be a Citizen Journalist
New Media Expo 2008 - Allvoices Allows Anyone to be a Citizen Journalist
by , 3:55 PM EDT, August 15th, 2008
LAS VEGAS, NV -- Allvoices was on hand at this week's New Media Expo to demonstrate their outlet and tools for citizen journalists. Centered around an outlet of user-generated news articles, Allvoices adds to that a suite of backend tools that adds context and other resources to that citizen reporting.
While the Internet and new media technologies have given everyone a chance to have their voice heard, one area where this concept hasn't quite taken hold is the reporting of news. With some people feeling the MSM (Mainstream Media) outlets may have an agenda that slants their reporting, the team at Allvoices have created a platform that allows anyone to become a citizen journalist. Amra Tareen, the founder of the group, gave us the details.
Basically, Allvoices provides you with all of the basic tools necessary to be a citizen journalist. Whether the news is important, exciting, or unusual, you can document it all, using video, images and text as the building blocks for your news event and report it on Allvoices.
In order to get started, a citizen journalist writes a short title and a description, and indicates where the news event being reporting took place. After the report has been published, Allvoices will find relevant newspaper articles, blogs, images and videos, and add them to the report to provide multiple perspectives.
Any member of the Allvoices community can discuss and contribute, by making comments, or uploading other media to the report. Whatever you do on the Allvoices site gets added to the citizen journalist's page.
We also noted that the entire Allvoices platform is Mac based, except for a PC that the company said it must grudgingly use to make sure their platform performs well on all browsers.
Observer Comments
Citizens can be reporters, but NOT journalists. That's like saying anybody can be a doctor or an engineer.
Journalism is a profession, for which people go to school for years to become accredited. Non-professional reporting or editorializing is called Blogging. Let's keep it in perspective please, otherwise we'll end up with even MORE spurious "news" than we have today.
QuoteGuest wrote:
Journalism is a profession, for which people go to school for years to become accredited.
... and just what is governing body responsible for determining who is "accredited?"
Answer: there is none.
Individual agencies, companies, sporting teams, etc. may decide to "accredit" a "journalist" but there is no official designation and no governing group.
Many people falsely believe that there is an "authority" such as the state bar, etc. There is none.
"Journalist" is a significantly nebulous title to define.
QuoteGuest wrote:
... and just what is governing body responsible for determining who is "accredited?"
Answer: there is none.
"Journalist" is a significantly nebulous title to define.
Do you mean the Society of Professional Journalists?
http://www.spj.org/
For the sake of ethics and credibility most "nebulous" journalists in the United States are members.
Most "citizen journalists" certainly are not, and their ethical standards are reflected in their "work."
Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:21 pm Subject: Citizen Journalist
As someone with both science and engineering degrees, I would tend to agree that having formal training in the discipline in question should be required to call one's self a scientist or engineer.
On the other hand, I think the term "citizen journalist" tries to convey the fact that the person conveying the news is not a professional journalist. Perhaps "citizen reporter" would be better, but I'm just using the terminology used by Allvoices.
I also think that Allvoices, by linking to other relevant content, tries to put the submission of the "citizen journalist" in the proper perspective. Plus, just because someone is a journalist doesn't mean that they'll report the news properly. Just look at the whole Iraq mess. The MSM was basically a cheerleading squad, while many bloggers saw the event for what it was.
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