At Toronto’s mesh conference, DigitalJournal.com spoke to media guru Jay Rosen for an interview on citizen media and user-generated content. In case you missed the interview Rosen did with my colleague David Silverberg at Digital Journal, I’m reposting it here.

Among other topics, Rosen discussed how mainstream media can use citizen journalism to their advantage.

According to a study in the Newspaper Research Journal, citizen journalism sites, including both news sites and blogs, differ significantly from newspaper websites. The report says citizen journalism complements rather than replaces commercial news sites.

Anyone following the rapidly changing world of media has noticed citizen journalists are increasingly playing some sort of role in the news-gathering process. Be it tipping-off pro journos about issues, working independently to dig through government documents or joining citizen journalism networks such as my company Digital Journal, citizen journalists are an increasingly active group.

As citizen journalism grows, more and more people are looking at its relationship with mainstream media. According to a study in the spring edition of the Newspaper Research Journal, citizen journalism complements rather than substitutes commercial news sites.

Researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Missouri, and the University of North Carolina examined content from 86 citizen blog sites, 53 citizen news sites and 63 daily newspaper sites in June and July 2009. Research evaluated which sites publish content on a daily basis, and how similar content was between citizen and mainstream sources.

“Like weeklies, citizen news and blog sites can serve as complements to daily newspapers,” the study notes. “They can provide opinion and hyperlocal news that large dailies do not. Dailies have more resources, but they tend to concentrate those resources on issues that affect larger geographic areas in their markets. The dailies are less likely to cover details of a neighborhood than are citizen news and blog sites, unless they actually imitate these citizen sites. Perhaps serving as a complement better suits these citizen sites.”

The study also indicates citizen journalism sites were further divided into “citizen news” sites and “citizen blog” sites. Researchers classified each by examining the “About” and “FAQ” sections on each site.
“The citizen news sites and citizen blog sites appear to be very different,” researchers note. “The citizen news sites resemble daily newspaper sites more than do blog sites, which indicates clearly that blog and news sites are not necessarily substitutes for each other within a local community.”

When it comes to timeliness of reporting, the researchers noted citizen blogs sites are not typically as up-to-date as daily newspaper websites. Their findings indicated 27.1 percent of the 85 citizen blog sites evaluated had published news on the day researchers visited the site. Furthermore, 55.3 percent published during the past week and another 10.6 percent had published within two weeks.

“Citizen news sites were slightly timelier than citizen blog sites, but the vast majority was not timely if daily posting is the standard for timeliness,” the study indicates.

From a technological and interactivity perspective, researchers say newspaper sites are more “sophisticated technologically than citizen blog sites,” as they often host more interactive content such as polls, forums and the ability to upload content.

One distinction, however, is that daily newspaper sites allowed more uploading opportunities than citizen blog sites, but not more than citizen news sites.

When it comes to linking to external sources, the study notes that citizen blog sites typically have more links to local websites than newspaper sites. Citizen blogs also link to other citizen news and blog sites more often than newspaper sites.

Researchers say data indicates citizen journalism sites (news and blog sites) are generally not substitutes for daily newspaper websites because they’re not as timely or not updated as often. Researchers say that is likely because news sites have greater financial resources to run a newsroom.

“Timeliness requires a newsroom that interacts with the community on a regular basis, and, as a result, news stories typically require greater investment of time than do opinion pieces,” the report says.

That said, the report indicates citizen news sites are more like weekly newspapers, and could pose as a better substitute for a weekly.

The study was financed with grants from the Knight and Pew foundations and authored by Stephen Lacy, Margaret Duffy, Daniel Riffe, Esther Thorson and Ken Fleming. The entire study can be found online here (opens in PDF).

This post is about citizen journalism, and more specifically an interesting sit-down Megan Garber of Nieman Journalism Lab had with Minnesota Public Radio‘s Linda Fantin and the Sunlight Foundation‘s Ellen Miller.

In the video below, the two talk about experiments with community-generated journalism. The interview is interesting because the two mention a few points that distinguish a citizen journalism experiments from those in traditional newsrooms.

Working with Digital Journal, I absolutely agree with a few points.

The first point is the ability to fail: Unlike a big media outlet that cannot always afford to take risks and experiment, a citizen journalism news outlet needs to be nimble and accept not every idea will work.

The ability to fail is key to success, because without the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t, a user-generated news outlet doesn’t always get a chance to develop best-practice methods.

The world of digital media is changing, and changing quickly, so the more opportunities media have to experiment the more likely we are to come up with a future for journalism that is based on real-world experience and experiments.

The community element is also incredibly important, as a user-generated news network relies on contributors to grow.

At Digital Journal, growth has always been the goal, but we’ve done everything with the tenets of good journalism in mind; fact-checking, sourcing, balance, objectivity, etc.

The world of news needs good journalism to work, so growth needs to always keep that in mind. Throwing out the fundamentals of good journalism to increase pageviews is suicide for a news site, so I’ve always believed management needs to be very active within the community and encourage good journalism over simply going after pageviews.

My experience has been fortunate in this aspect; most of the citizen reporters I’ve had the privilege of working with have been keen to learn how to practice good journalism, or make their reporting better. They may not always know how to be a good journalist while they’re starting out, so when it comes to community a citizen journalism site needs management that will be nurturing, but also firm and informative. Clear direction is key.

The citizen journalists I work with every day work very well under pressure and follow guidelines to the letter when they’re given a bit of coaching. In the end, everyone wants good-quality work, so managing a citizen community well is key to the birth of good user-generated reportage.

There’s a cliche about teaching a man to fish that works perfectly as an analogy for building a network of good citizen journalism.

I won’t spoil more of the video at this point, and instead invite you to hear Fantin and Miller talk on the subject.

And about the background noise in the video: As Nieman Journalism Lab notes, “the video’s soundtrack, if you’re wondering, is an apparently epic game of ping-pong taking place in a nearby rec room.”

Ellen Miller and Linda Fantin on experimentation from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

In case you missed the announcement, the company I work with (DigitalJournal.com) announced a major upgrade to its mobile site today. Visitors will now be able to submit news, blogs and images using smartphones anywhere in the world. Anyone with a cellphone is a citizen journalist.

The new mobile site is available by visiting m.digitaljournal.com from your cellphone.

We’ve made this announcement because the greatest asset for any news outlet is the ability to have reporters file a story or submit a photo from wherever they are. Whether it’s from a house in the suburbs of Toronto, the scene of an accident in Barcelona, a press conference in Cape Town or a crowded street in Beijing, people all over the world now have the ability to instantly submit blogs, news images and more to DigitalJournal.com via their cellphone.

Digital Journal’s new mobile site includes a long list of  enhancements and features for mobile news junkies and roving reporters. Think of this as a comprehensive iPhone app that doesn’t require an iPhone, because the site will work on any smart hone. All you need is an Internet connection on your mobile device.

Among the improvements and new features, visitors to m.digitaljournal.com will see:

• Comprehensive content: Digital Journal’s mobile site now boasts more content, and a lot more to do. You can now read or submit news and blogs, view or submit images, browse through groups, comment on virtually everything and click on anyone’s name to see recent activity. The mobile site is a completely portable social news network.

• Submit news: If you’re a Digital Journalist, simply click “Post News” and provide a headline, keywords and details of your article. You can save a draft to see how it looks and then publish it when your draft is ready and polished up. All Digital Journalists are paid for their news reports (more info).

• Post blogs: Every member of the site can now publish a blog from m.digitaljournal.com. It may not be a news report but something fun worth sharing. Click on the link to blogs from the top of the page and you can post a blog on any topic from wherever you are.

• Submit images: Every member of the site has been given a secret email address they can use to submit images. From your mobile device, you can email pictures to this secret address and they will automatically be uploaded to the site with your name listed as the photographer. You can then add your images to any article or blog post across the site, even if someone else wrote the post. It’s mobile content crowdsourcing!

• Share: You can now share articles, blogs and images with your friends, family and coworkers from m.digitaljournal.com using our embedded sharing tools. Publish directly to Facebook or Twitter while on the go.

• Groups: What would a social news network be like without Groups? Visit m.digitaljournal.com and you can view recently active Groups on the site. You can join any Group and then publish blogs and share info directly with that Group’s members.

• Vote for articles: If you’re logged in to the mobile site, all articles come with a vote button. If you enjoyed reading it, vote it up because your input helps sort news on the front page.

• Mobile editors: All Digital Journalists can also edit while on the fly. Using your mobile phone, you can click “edit” on any article and make revisions or add information to any story. Writers have to approve changes before they are implemented on the site (more on how this works).

• Listen to any article using ReadSpeaker: We’ve been testing this for some time now and it’s been a huge success. Anyone who visits m.digitaljournal.com can click “Listen to article” and have ReadSpeaker read articles out loud to them. This is a great feature if you’re busy driving or cooking supper, for example, all thanks Voice Corp.

There are a lot more features available, so all you have to do is visit m.digitaljournal.com from your mobile phone and get in on the action.