The LA Times gives slightly snarky coverage to the phenom of amateur journalism:
Across the country “citizen newspapers” are springing up, full of promise, energy and atrocious spelling errors. They’re largely written by unpaid, untrained and unedited citizen reporters, who say they “commit acts of journalism” more for kicks than out of a sense of civic calling.
But I loved the quotes from Prof. Phil Meyer, author of The Vanishing Newspaper:
“What you’re seeing is a radical new way of doing journalism. We’re back to the time of the lonely pamphleteer or the tramp printers in the Europe. . . .
“What you’re seeing right now isn’t the end product; it’s in development. We old-timers look at it and say, ‘This is terrible. This isn’t journalism.’ But, in fact, this is something that has value and needs to be developed. . . .
“I close every semester by saying, ‘I’ve just taught you journalism as it was practiced in my day. The journalism in your day is going to be different. It’s up to you to invent it, please don’t mess it up.’ “
