Citizen journalism: overhyped or underused?

In response to the Frontline show about the news industry, I want to focus on the idea of citizen journalism that they talked about.

I loved it when Nick Lemann said citizen journalism is like a church newsletter.
"Yes, I am belittling them," he said.

I'm all about empowering the people and democritizing the means of production, but citizen journalism is not as great as people would like to think. The one guy who mentioned how citizen bloggers don't just report, but also do agenda-setting, did have a good point. It reminded me of the Jena 6 story that became national news through the perseverance of a few bloggers.

So there are people out there who act like journalists without working for a media outlet, but those bright exceptions do not mean most people have the interest orhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif ability to be good journalists. I go to school with dozens of people who want to be journalists and go to classes for it and still haven't figured out how to put together a credible story with the proper sources and no holes. I don't trust ordinary people to write well, but that can be fixed by editors to a certain extent. What worries me is the ethics. Journalists who know the rules and have their careers on the line still make stupid ethics decisions (see Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, Allan Detrich).

So while I think newspapers can foster intelligent forums and learn important tips that way, relying on citizens to do your work is a bad gamble with the future of the industry. Now, more than ever, professional papers need to set themselves apart with credibility that ordinary people aren't capable to provide.