RonRoss's blog

Websites you might want to imitate

Here are three examples of citizen journalism websites you might want to imitate:

Don't copy and paste: write your own words

The New York Times is losing more than readers these days. The newspaper once again faces an embarrassing charge of plagiarism by one of its reporters.

Citizen Journalists Can Learn from Mistakes of Mainstream Media

In the United States, evening television news broadcasts are losing audience. In the spring of 2008 2.5 million viewers switched off the evening news. Statistically, this is only a small percentage of the overall viewing audience; but among those still watching television, the amount of television they watch each day is declining. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_networktv_audience.php?cat=2&media=6

Stupid stunt by 'citizen journalists' backfires

Last September, I made a big deal about so-called citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. They are the couple who posed as a pimp and prostitute and were offered housing help from ACORN to set up a house of prostitution.

Global platform for video news reports

Have you been to http://www.mayomo.com/ yet? If you’re a photojournalist or a citizen journalist activist like me, you’ll find it a most interesting website.

Be sure you have lots of time, because you can get lost for a couple of hours watching fascinating footage from around the world.

MaYoMo is short for Map Your Moments. It is a video-centric social network for citizen photojournalists and multimedia news content providers from all around the world.  

Exciting world of citizen journalism

This is an excerpt from chapter two of the forthcoming book by Dr Ron Ross and Susan Cormier titled Handbook for citizen journalists:

Passionate about press freedom

The American Revolution produced many notable newspapermen who wrote passionately in support of independence and who injected into their writings the idea of a free press. Many of their writings helped develop the press freedoms that were written into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

That is why the United States has been the world leader for press freedom for well over 200 years. The US press earned the title of the “Fourth Estate” because it positioned itself as a watchdog over the government.

Journalists must be accountable

At the National Association of Citizen Journalists we believe all journalists should live and work by certain core values. We have 15 Core Values that we promote at the NACJ. The following is Core Value #4 - Accountability to the Public:

Why I started CJ group

The National Association of Citizen Journalists was formed out of a need that I discovered as the publisher of a weekly paper in suburban Denver.

For more than a decade, I published a popular, free entertainment weekly tabloid in Douglas County, Colo., that had lots of fun stuff to read and to do and lots of ads, but very little news.

Citizen journalism handbook

A tremendous amount of research, writing and editing has gone into this landmark book for citizen journalists being written by the National Association of Citizen Journalists' Ron Ross and Susan Cormier. However, the book is not finished. In fact, it is still undergoing some serious rewrites and additions.

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