Amanda Michel Speaks About Citizen Journalism

Amanda Michel spoke to my class via skype about her previous job at Off the Bus. (She now works for ProPublica.) She sees many advantages to having citizen journalists.

First, citizen journalists are able to find out information that professional journalists can't. For example, Mayhill Fowler was able to gain access to an Obama event that was closed off to mainstream journalists. At the event she heard Obama say that people in small Midwest and Pennsylvania towns are "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy" as result of job losses. Mayhill made Obama's comment public by posting an article on Off the Bus.

Second, the number of citizens willing to report on what they hear and see is making gathering information on complex and vast topics easier. Right now, Michel is working on how the stimulus package is affecting cities and towns across the nation. She wouldn't be able to gather all that information with just a couple professional journalists at her disposal. She needs hundreds if not thousands of people doing research on the topic. That's where citizen journalists come in.

Third, citizen journalists are passionate about what they report on. Often citizen journalists write about events that affect them. Michel told the class a story of a citizen journalists for the Huffington Post getting VIP tickets to an Obama event. His seat was in a mud pit. He was confused, so he started to ask the other people in the pit if they had VIP tickets. What he found out was that VIP tickets were given to known non-Obama supporters in order to fill the venue. Being affected by an event makes a reporter do a better job in reporting it, because he or she cares about it.

But there is a downside to citizen journalism. Citizen journalists don't know the ethics of journalism well. When a citizen journalist does something ethically questionable, he or she is often criticized. Mayhill knows this all to well. At the Obama event she did not reveal that she was a citizen journalist for Off the Bus. If she had, she may not have been able to get into the event. By not being upfront about her identity she got a good story. There is no clear right decision she should have made.

That is fitting, because life is never black and white. It's mostly up to an individual to decide what is right and wrong, because it is him or her that has to live with the consequences. Mayhill did what she believed to be right. Others--including me--might not agree, but we are not Mayhill.