Citizen Journalism as a term must die this year. I mean, just a little further and we'd be calling it 'Human Journalism...'

Anyone agree you're L7 if you use it?

Hello, world. Just popping in again real quick to share some thoughts. Mostly concerning the Myers-Brigg INFP personality type as it relates to grassroots journalism.

If you have a chance, check out this ed/op piece on Muncie Free Press. Long story short, a reader pointed out a small, grassroots newsletter being published by a local newspaper forum celebrity. I contacted him and asked to reprint some of it. He agreed.

Great article at the NY Times about Muncie being studied historically. That is, another indicator that backs up my idea that Muncie, Indiana is a great place to try a citizen journalism site.

Last Friday, I sent a selection of some of the links that have talked about Gannett's 'citizen journalism' effort in Muncie, Indiana, to Poynter's Online-News list (where, I'm sure they're tired of my harping on the media giants being too haughty to work with the lowly "bloggers...")

In any case, I didn't get any responses at first. Clyde Bentley Ph.D. spoke up, though, and I've gotten permission to reprint his thoughts here. It points out some things that are perhaps hard to swallow, but which nevertheless are true. I guess it's fair considering I'm always quick to point out differences in the various methods or approaches to Journalism in this country.

Well, at least according to their TOS on one of their sites. It came up in this thread on The Star Press' forums. I asked who owned material submitted to Gannett for their new 'Get Published!' section. (With a follow-up on why they didn't make that information more prominent when dealing with citizens.) Now, maybe I don't understand the jargon in that phrase, which is quite common if you Google, but "exploit" is such a nasty word, ya know? Says a lot, I think.

I've launched (kinda - it's still a work in progress ;) Local Journalism Dot Net, a site concentrating on what all the various citizen journalism sites are doing and have done.

I'll write up more about it tomorrow (looks clean, tho), but check out the recently unveiled Pegasus News. Angel investor backed Independent News start-up in the greater Dallas area.

In case you haven't seen it yet, Tom Grubisich has a follow-up piece to last years look at Citizen Journalism efforts around the country. While he's not as harsh as he was last year, he again brings up some great points. Muncie Free Press even gets a mention.

Local Onliner recently posted some interesting news about BackFence.com teaming up with the Loudon Independent, a small Virginia Paper. I kinda like the idea, and have one pretty similar.