Citizen journalism not just for Gen Y
The biggest story from Democrat nomination to hit the front pages of the papers came from a 61 year-old “citizen journalist” by the name of Mayhill Fowler.
Matthew Ingram, technology writer for The Globe, described her “as lightning rod for critics of the practice, after not one but two somewhat embarrassing scoops from the U.S. campaign trail, the first of which involved Barack Obama and the second of which — just last week — involved former president Bill Clinton”.
Wrote the LA Times,
The latest incident cemented Fowler’s place as the unlikely face of the new-media revolution that is remaking presidential campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news. Or an unpublished novelist “with absolutely no journalism training” can alter the national debate.
The Columbia Journalism Review asked if Mayhill had “any reservations about publishing the piece” and her reply highlights a point why citizen journalists face the same issues as a journalist would.
Mayhill replied,
Oh, yes. I had already told my East Coast editor Amanda Michel that there was more on the tape besides what I wrote immediately after, online. I told her there might be one more piece about what Obama had to say about Pennsylvania, and that it was pretty damning. We had a long conversation and she was talking about how if you’re really going to be a journalist, you have to be willing to report on what you see, what you hear, regardless of your political opinions. Already ‘Off the Bus’ had too many bloggers who are pro-Obama and therefore present everything from an Obama slant. And I thought about that for a while and at some point I realized on Monday that she was right. And on Tuesday, the piece was just in my head suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about it but the entire piece was suddenly there and at that moment I knew I was going to do it, and I had a sense of peace about it.
