How about we all finally just move completely to citizen journalism and be done with this noise?
Have you read much "citizen journalism?"
Have you tried to look to local neighborhood blogs to find out what's happening in your town?
Here in Chicago there's one blog that does a decent job of this, http://www.uptownupdate.com
But its a labor of love. What happens if the writer gets ill and has to take a break for a month or two? Who's covering Uptown then?
There are a few other neighborhood blogs like it that don't update more than once or twice a week or that are filled with hateful invective.
Or let's look at it this way: Did you learn about the in's and out's of the latest Pentagon policies from your wacky neighbor up the street?
Citizen journalism should really be called "amateur journalism" and treated as such. Valuable, valuable things can come from amateurs: photos, facts, reports etc. But amateur news services....are not news services.
I think another hope to look to is a growing public understanding of the problem. As the news situation sinks in with the most people, I hope it will become a point of honor to pay for quality reporting, and I hope there will be easy avenues to channel this money.
And if your definition of CJ is rubbish, then we need search engines and aggregators set in place to help us filter through the crap. Still, this isn't part of the mainstream sources.
And I'm having a hard time seeing how you are rationalizing that news orgs like CNN or NBC are not comprised of iffy product placement and factual errors. They report what they want you to hear, not what you want to hear. Fox News, for how much of a news organization than a tabloid they are, reports factual errors on a constant basis. Product placement, have you ever watched the filler crap that CNN or any of them show during the slow news days? Sanjay Gupta, who works for CNN, has continuiously promoted big pharma companies that he has financial interests in.
Every news organization, no matter what its name, is biased in one way or another. They have to sell ad revenue or else they'll go off the air, so they show you what they want you to hear. Not what you want to hear. This is where citizen/independent journalism shines and is also a reason why newspapers are failing. People have found out that there are better sources of news out there than what you get through your television or off the newsstands.
-"The term "citizen journalism" does not have to mean "your wacky neighbor up the street". What about the, few, independent journalists working out there."
There's a difference between an independent journalist and a citizen journalist. The terms are not interchangeable.
Josh Marshall (TPM) is an independent journalist. He is not a citizen journalist. He does this for a living and lives off the fruit of it. Arrington is not a citizen journalist either. I agree that independent journalists (essentially, journalism startups) will become increasingly important. But that's different from citizen journalism.
Furthermore, while many citizen journalists are independent, I would argue that many aren't. What about the folks uploading to CNN's iReport? They're working for the mainstream press.
-"I'm having a hard time seeing how you are rationalizing that news orgs like CNN or NBC are not comprised of iffy product placement and factual errors."
There are instances of sketchy product placement and certainly factual errors in the mainstream press.
However, there are also mechanisms for dealing with these when they're exposed. People lose their jobs. Have their pay docked. Get moved to other assignments. Lose face with the public. They also get sued...all the time.
Citizen Journalism, on the other hand, is, by definition, the wild west.
I am constantly underwhelmed by the stuff I read on blogs and on Twitter. It's all marketing. And it's often disguised as editorial. Ever been to a "tweet-up"? The one's I've attended consisted of dozens of people talking about how to talk to people on twitter. Ugh.
The mainstream media screws up all the time. But at least there's people there committed to NOT screwing up.
As per your last point...what are these "better sources of news" that you speak of? I'm always interesting in finding new stuff to read. If you've got some great links, please share them.
So I think we're on the same page regarding independent journalists. We're only going to see more Talking Points Memo's and the like.
But I'm still very skeptical about citizen journalism as a tranformative force unto itself, based on months of watching the local scene here in Chicago. There are some great blogs here, but none that are really capable of carrying the torch for a newspaper if it went under.