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Making responsible journalists out of citizens

SPJ often gets mistakenly tagged as old school, a bunch of old print guys reminiscing over the days of manual typewriters.  The reality is, SPJ is embracing the future. 

The newest example is our Citizen Journalism Academy.  The first drew about small crowd of 25 in Chicago last weekend.  The crowd was small, but SPJ executive director Terry Harper those who attended gave the programming high marks.  Here’s how the Chicago Tribune reported it.

The point is to train the growing numbers of folks contributing to online projects about ethical and responsible journalism.

The next CJA is in June 7 in Greenboro, N.C.

If you know any budding citizen journalists, bloggers or others, tell them to check it out.  Maybe try to bring it to your town on the next go-around.

Get more information here.

Published Friday, May 23, 2008 11:46 AM by RonSylvester
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Comments

# re: Making responsible journalists out of citizens

Thursday, June 05, 2008 11:54 AM by JHop
Good grief! This May 23 item had 641 views and nobody had anything to say about it? Who says journalists are all opinionated?

Well, OK, I'd better answer my own challenge.  I'm not quite comfortable with the "citizen journalist" idea -- which seems to suggest that we professionals are not also citizens. But it will do for now, because someone does need to acquaint many of the new bloggers and video collectors with the sense of responsibility and veracity that make the news worth having.

# re: Making responsible journalists out of citizens

Friday, June 06, 2008 3:38 PM by Angela_Connor
I will be at the June 7th event as a panelist. The community that I manage is filled with users who have great potential. I think having some of the pertinient skills and information you guys are providing can catapult the blogging and storytelling skills of many. Will they become "journalists?" Maybe, maybe not but as a journalist I don't get caught up in a non-journalist adopting the moniker. It's justnot a battle worth fighting. Let's teach them and benefit form the work we put in.

# Enjoyed the Greensboro conference

Monday, June 09, 2008 12:36 AM by nicomachus
I attended and really enjoyed the Greensboro conference. The sessions on FOI requests and technology (where we learned about your blog) were, to me, the most helpful. I also enjoyed your article in the recent Quill. Keep up the exploratory work.

On whether citizens (in this case, I mean merely non-professional journalists) can have a sense of ethics, I still find it a bit presumptuous of journalists to think that non-professional or untrained writers lack an awareness of moral responsibility when writing.

The "bloggers vs. journalists" debate has been over for years, but overtones of that debate seem to linger in the question "can citizens (i.e. bloggers) be journalists?"

phillip
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