Citizen Journalism is a social movement in which ordinary people with no background in journalism are taking to the streets and reporting news often in the forms of blogs or podcasts.

Citizen Journalism has made news media more accountable for what they are reporting, acting like watchmen and bringing stories to the attention of the news media that would otherwise go unnoticed. Citizen Journalism also benefits from the fact that the people writing the stories are often knowledgeable or interested in the areas in which they report. This is different from regular news media in that stories are assigned to a reporter who might have very little knowledge on the subject or have little to no interest at all.

Problems arise when citizen journalist become to gun-ho and begin reporting with little evidence to back up their claims or do not think about what they are doing. An example of this is the D.C. Madame incident in which a list phone numbers was released by a female escort service in Washington DC. Problems also stem from the lack of unbiased reporting done by citizen journalists.

Examples of Citizen Journalism

• Assignment Zero
• Rocket Boom
• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report

• Article in Wired Magazine about Assignment Zero
• MSNBC using citizen journalism
• PBS based Weblog article on citizen journalism

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