Finding the Gold Standard in the Blogophony

Freelance journalist and blogger Graham Holliday writes in the Press Gazette that while many stories appear in the blogosphere first and then make it to MSM, bloggers don't always get it right.

Success will go, he maintains, to the editorial team that gets the right combination of citizen and traditional journalism. "For, as should be obvious, the 500,000 UK bloggers know more, in detail, on any and every subject under the sun than the staff of any individual newspaper," blogger Tim Worstall told Holliday.

Holliday's story is part of a Reporter's Guide to Citizen Journalism in today's Gazette. For journos (whose existence is hard to imagine) who still haven't gotten a handle on blogging, Julie Tomlin interviewed citizen journalism doyen Dan Gillmor. Martin Stabe paid a visit to the dedicated BBC unit that sifts through the deluge of "user-generated content". Jonathan Munro of ITV, John Ryley of Sky News related their experiences of using content supplied by the cameraphone-wielding public -- maintaining that editors will always be necessary, a stance that makes most bloggers double over laughing. Nic Robertson of CNN wrote about using a cameraphone to report from Iraq. Kyle McRae recounts the early days of his citizen journalism picture agency Scoopt, and how it has made few friends on tabloid feature desks. Links to RSS readers and social bookmarking sites are included.