Citizen Journalism
Citizen Journalism" is one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days. Many news broadcasters are probably thinking of implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number have already done so.
But there's plenty of confusion about citizen journalism. What exactly is it? Is it about sending whatever pictures you click with your mobile phone to a news channel and getting famous? Or is it about speaking out on a media microphone and feel that the world has heard you?
Merinews, as India"s first citizen journalism website, takes it upon itself to define what citizen journalism is all about. But even before that let us first know why citizen journalism is so important.
In this world where every media house is driven by a motive to earn revenue, it is bound to happen that news that is important to you and me is often pushed back. Its place is taken by stories that are tailored to make us believe what they want us to believe. And thereby often we land up debating about issues that perhaps are not at all important to us but are hyped to generate revenue for the media houses.
Citizen Journalism is breaking free of this media bias. It is about writing on issues, which you feel are important. It is about telling the world your views. It is about showing everyone the world through your eyes. It is about the self-belief that your opinion does matter to thousands of others.
Perhaps, driven by this motivation of voicing their own opinion, bloggers for years, have put down their thoughts on their personal pages and we all know about their phenomenal success. But those were individual efforts and at times lack the proper credibility of sources. Merinews builds on these shortcomings and takes the voice-sharing model to a common open platform.
To give an entirely new dimension to this platform, merinews intends to build a hybrid model with a mix of pro and citizen journalism, where our editorial team will make an extra effort to add shine to all your articles as well as report issues which perhaps are unknowingly left untouched.