Citizen journalism has already upset a lot of traditional boundaries between journalists and regular people.
Blogged book reviews are competing against struggling newspaper review sections and more citizen reporters are filtering information collected by newspaper journalists.
Today, Jeff Jarvis is writing about what he calls Vigilante Journalism--a new breed of punchy citizen reporters with videocameras who ask uncomfortable questions. A recent television feature about Jimmy Justice, a citizen journalist who confronts traffic cops, treated his work as obnoxious.
Jarvis responds with a passionate essay about the nature of citizen journalism, reminding us that even though the boundaries have shifted, the work a journalist, citizen or otherwise, has not changed. Check it out:
"On the Today Show this morning, David Gregory got on a high horse interviewing Jimmy, asking whether he wasn’t just a bit obnoxious...Well, what’s any less obnoxious about a reporter asking the same question? That’s exactly why subjects so often think reporters are rude: they’re being asked questions they don’t want to answer."
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