Shared Journalism

Over at PJNet, Leonard Witt makes a plaintive post not to kill off the term "citizen journalism."

I like cit-j -- makes a nice shorthand, which is what us old newsroom types love to throw around -- and more seriously I think it does capture a certain essence of what's about. But then there's all that baggage that has glommed onto the term.

Let me make a suggestion:
-- For those people already doing it without a tie to an established news organization, we already have a term: "independent journalism." I think it's quite a good one. Many of those folks are putting out good quality work. Why tag them with a term, "citizen" that somehow seems to take on the connotation of "amateur"? They're just independent, that's all.

-- For those whose work appears on the increasing number of mainstream news sites that are, at least grudingly , incoporating such things into their news routines, why not try "shared journalism"? That embraces what we're really trying to do -- share the turf, incorporate larger ideas and more expertise.

And you know, come to think of it, that shared journalism idea embraces a lot of the independent sites where more than one person is involved, too.