Craig's List Founder Decides to Promote Citizen Journalism

If you're not familiar with Craig's List - which offers a little something for everyone - you're missing out. I use this list almost daily to look for contract writing and other gigs, but they have listings for housing, personals, everything.

So I was interested when I saw this:

Craigslist.org gets more than 4 million classified ads and 1 million forums postings each month, and Newmark who no longer runs it but remains one of three board members is often blamed for decimating classified advertising revenue at regional newspapers. But he says he has no desire to steal readers from mainstream media.

But he believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an "open source" model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists.

"People are looking for attitude and guts in reporting not full-on gonzo journalism, but hey, tell us what you think," said Newmark, who described himself as having Whig values strong on defense, fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

The term "citizen journalist" has traditionally bothered me, probably because I went to the trouble of going to school to learn how to be one. And my God, I was taught by the best, a crusty, no-frills old Economist/New York Times editor whose first major tour of duty was in the trenches in World War II - Arnold Brackman.

But as the mainstream media provides less and less real news, and leaves so much out, I'm beginning to realize that the need is great for someone - many "ones" - to fill the void.

Will the results always be sterling? Hell, no. People born after 1975, for example, probably wouldn't know "good" ethical journalism if it smacked them in the head. But journalism has always required the reader to be critical as he/she read.

The first rule I learned in journalism was, aptly: Only believe a bit of what you hear and no more than half of what you read.

The second rule was: Don't think you know the facts once you read them. Only if you use those facts as a springboard to learn more can you ever hope to come to some idea of what is really the case.

I tender these to all of you, and those future "citizen journalists". It's why I still read at least three different versions of every story before I feel like I can even begin to get a handle on it. And Brack taught us that, too. He'd make us go through three very dissimilar papers for each story to dissect it and to look for what was NOT said and to understand why what was presented was offered the way it was.