Jane’s Convergent Journalism Blog

6 recent, online forms of citizen journalism included in this timeline are from Unpacking my Library, “Actually Existing” Citizen Journalism Projects and Typologies

1. Personal homepages
2. Indymedia: a global collective of independent media organisations
3. Blogs
4. Hyperlocal Citizens Journalism eg US sites The Northwest Voice and Muncie Free Press
5. Media Citizens Journalism eg CNN citizen journalism site CNN Exchange
6. Networked/Collaborative Citizen Journalism eg. Assignment Zero

Timeline of Citizen Journalism

18th century

• US pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine and the anonymous authors of the Federalist Papers gained prominence by printing their own publications

19th century

• 1803 - George Howe, printer of Australia’s first newspaper the Sydney Gazette, gathers local content directly from the public, with them dropping suggestions for stories into a ’slip box’ hung outside the Gazette office.

1960s

• video footage captured by citizens of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy

1980s

• video footage captured by onlookers of police beating Rodney King in Los Angeles. This article describes how the tape was first rejected by local police and CNN.
• rise of talk radio, cable access TV and ‘zines (self-published magazines) give people the chance to share their views with a much larger audience
• in newspapers, there were letters to the editor and op-ed pieces submitted by citizens
• (US) pirate radio stations hit the airwaves without the permission of the FCC
• New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen helped spearhead the public journalism or civic journalism movement, focused on getting mainstream reporters to serve the public

1994

• First blogs emerge, like Justin’s Links from the Underground
• Drudge Report starts as subscriber-based email by Matt Drudge (not a journalist), and later a website most famous for breaking the Monica Lewinksy scandal

1999

• Indymedia site launched after the WTO protests in Seattle that year. At Indymedia, anyone can share photos, text and video with other activists and the world.
• Blogger.com starts, giving anyone free access to blogging tools and web space

2000

• OhMyNews site launched in South Korea, now a popular mainstream news source.

2001

• eyewitness bloggers in Iraq such as Salam Pax giving stunningly detailed early accounts of the war

2004

• Conservative bloggers helped discredit documents related to President Bush’s National Guard service used in an episode of “60 Minutes II” in 2004. This became known as Rathergate.
• hyperlocal citizen journalism emerges. By and large (though not entirely), reports from hyperlocal news sites tended to focus on small-scale community events like the building of new high school gyms.

2005

• OhMyNews goes global, seeking international contributors

2006

• A former Lockheed Martin engineer takes his story about security flaws with Coast Guard ships straight to YouTube after the mainstream media ignored his entreaties. Later, the Washington Post wrote about it.
• CNN launches its own citizen journalism site, I-Reports

2005

• the earliest photos on the scene of the London bombings on July 7 were taken by ordinary citizens with their cameraphones. Mainstream media sites run by the BBC and MSNBC accepted photos, video and text reports — a practice that continues to this day among many major broadcasters.

2007

• Assignment Zero publishes its first collaborative news stories
• Endemol, the developer of Big Brother, started to produce daily user-generated TV news shows. The Dutch-language shows ask viewers to send in their own reports from which they make local news TV items. Videos are then screened before being placed on the sites and selected for the presenter-led TV show. The daily half-hour programmes - called IK OP TV (Me on TV) - debuted this week on seven regional TV channels in Holland
• bloggers document the uprising and violence in Burma, and included in mainstream news media like BBC

Sources

Mediashift: Your Guide to Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism defined, history, terminology, ad hoc examples, big media and hybrid examples, and resources.

Unpacking my Library: “Actually Existing” Citizen Journalism Projects and Typologies: Part I
Looks at some of the citizen journalism projects that have either existed in the past and continue to exist today - the personal homepage, Indymedia and Blogs.

Wikipedia Entry on Citizen Journalism

List of global citizen journalism (news) site at Sourcewatch