Yes, exactly right. That’s what’s so very disappointing about the whole business – the NUJ is showing no signs of doing that.

I think it would be great for someone within a newspaper to have responsibility for helping and nurture groups within the local community.

It would be even better if a newspaper group were to back the idea across their titles, as I think it would ultimately make it easier to draw in local news and info.

On another level, you wouldn’t have the IT support or legal issues you might cross if these blogs were hosted under your own domain.

But you would be involved with both helping groups keep in touch with members and receive information in a standard format that could be easily re-purposed in a variety of ways.

All the best
Craig

I think what you say is interesting – so I am right in thinking you can envisage someone having a sepcific role within a professional news organisation to nuture and instruct citizen journalists?

I think news teams will be smaller, but maybe one person one that team has the responsibility to help local groups and organisations set up blog driven sites via Blogger or WordPress that then provide an RSS feed for the other members to follow.

This would allow a publication to draw in some of the standard news they should be covering – village reports, sports scores, what’s on – in a very simple format, freeing up time to get back out on their patch.

Using the tools that are already out there will save both time and resources.

All the best, Craig

We’ve already got millions of blogs and bloggers, apparently the future of journalism, we should see some stories coming out of this by now. But it’s not happening. Dan Rather in the US, and legally dubious political tittle tattle on Guido Fawkes, what are the three best stories recently that came from a blog? Compare them to the best exclusive stories in today’s newspapers…

If newspapers are dying out through lack of readers then I can’t see who’s going to do the important coverage of events that we need.

Just as a thought experiment – think about guardian unlimited, it’s a fantastic operation, the best news website in the free market – what’s the best story they’ve broke recently?

I love websites, blogs, they provide a fantastic source of interesting opinions and new views on things I hadn’t thought about before, but when you talk about “citizen journalism” taking over from professional journalists, I don’t think it’s snobbish to think that it’s sad that such an important part of the public sphere is losing professionals whose job it is to investigate and report on what’s going on in favour of private citizens who have an axe to grind.

And as for Greenslade, it’s very easy for him to say “web 2.0″ is making journalists unnecessary. As the number of people actually working in the media decreases, the number of “media commentators” seems to go up. Seems there’s still a lucrative career to be had in writing about the downfall of journalism, but not in writing about things that are actually happening any more.

This whole business might be inevitable – to be honest I think it is. Like carriage-drivers, blacksmiths and British coal miners, maybe being a full time, independent, self-driven journalist is something that there’s no longer a call for. But unlike those, I don’t see that there’s an acceptable alternative. I’m not going to be like Cnut and try to turn the tide of bloggers and personal websites taking over from news organisations, but I can’t see where a decent replacement is going to come from. Thoughts?