New report: Citizen media here to stay
The Institute for Interactive Journalism, J-Lab, has released a lenthy study on hyperlocal citizen media and its sustainability over time. In a news release, J-Lab writes:
Most citizen media ventures are shoestring labors of love, funded out of the founders’ own pockets, and staffed by volunteer content contributors. While they’d like more readers and revenues, site founders nevertheless professed a solid resolve to continue: 51% said they didn’t need to make money to keep going; 82% said they planned to continue “indefinitely.” Nearly all would welcome reinforcements and the ability to make even token payments to writers.
“While not all individual sites will continue to operate, we project that the phenomenon of citizen media will be sustainable, with new sites coming online in serial fashion to replace those that collapse as their founders burn out,” Schaffer said.
73 percent of 500 citizens who participated in the survey think of their sites as a success. Shaffer in the quote above is Jan Schaffer, J-Lab’s Executive Director.
Read more:
The full report at Knight Citizen News Network
(via Center for Citizen Media)
That was a comprehensive study indeed! I’m happy about all positive findings and think that now is the time for Citizen Journalism sites making it big.
The blogging trend has paved the way and made people realize you can reach a wide audience even if you’re an amateur writer. This will drive seld confidence for more people to contribute.
And if you look at hyper local sites this implies even more, because here there’s a greater chance for a citizen to have a “scope”, since no traditional local paper has the resources to cover every cat trapped in a tree top.
But the citizen with the kitchen view has just that!