Dumb? Brilliant? Both?

There's a lot of talk in the blogomediajournosphere about "Citizen Journalists."

One of the toughest tasks for a media organization today is to figure out how to cost-effectively get at the Long Tail, particularly when it comes to advertising.

Citizen Ad Reps?

Would only work with a fanatical user base like Craig's List has. Would have to be simple. Would have to be conversational. Possible Amway-esque cheese factor could be problematic.

Percolating...

Comments

[Brendan Watson]

One of the problems with citizen journalism is that people tend to believe that this movement is inventing something new. In reality, its just reinventing (and improving) the wheel (see my post on this subject).

The idea of citizen ad reps hasn't been that widespread, and they haven't carried that title. But this idea has been used at small community radio stations and public radio stations for years. The citizen journalism needs to spend more time researching past self-publishing, citizen media efforts in order to learn from the successes and failures of past related movements. That way we can spend less time reinventing, and more time improving, the wheel.

One of the problems with citizen journalism is that people tend to believe that this movement is inventing something new. In reality, its just reinventing (and improving) the wheel (see my post on this subject).

The idea of citizen ad reps hasn't been that widespread, and they haven't carried that title. But this idea has been used at small community radio stations and public radio stations for years. The citizen journalism movement needs to spend more time researching past self-publishing/citizen media efforts in order to learn from the successes and failures of past related movements. That way we can spend less time reinventing, and more time improving, the wheel.

I do think, though, that you're on to something in terms of getting citizens more involved in also aspects of the media. This can only add to the transparency and credibility of citizen journalism projects (whether it can produce a successful business model, well, perhaps that is a different issue). Best of luck.

[Bruce]

Citizen ad reps — like citizen reporters — have to do something that more and more MSM reporters haven't done, and that's hit the streets. The best ad reps, like the best reporters, pound the pavement and hustle it. They develop contacts, sources, eyes and ears who can feed them tips/leads.

The big papers have gotten far, far away from this. It's an old-school concept, but it's really the only way to go. Granted, you're going to have to be able to conduct some/most business over the land-line or via the miracle of e-mail, but...nothing beats face-to-face networking. It will be a challenge. But people need to be actively integrated into and involved with the community they're covering. It's easy to sit and pontificate about big issues; what's hard will be the running feed from the ground level....but that's also where the value will derive. If someone's house down the street gets broken into, everyone on that street will want to know the details...

Which brings me to a point, dearest Pegasi, that I am curious about. Here in my little town, the paper runs detailed (I mean, *detailed!*) accounts of crime reports. So much detail that I have seen reports printed of items stolen valued at $1.

The "Cops" phenomenon has yet to be transmitted into a media format that salves our predeliction for rubberneckin'. I think that the Peg would have a major source of interest from the community by more or less running the entire police report from every neighborhood. This has the added benefit of putting some heat on the city officials because hot zones are going to be easy to identify. In Dallas, the actual crime numbers are lost in year-end eval pieces that say "XXX murders, XXX rapes, XXX robberies" etc. Those numbers are so impersonal they don't rile anyone up. If people knew daily what was going on in the world around them, they'd likely be more activist and vocal. And demand more action. Now THAT'S impactful journalism, journalism as the watchdog, journalism at the heart of what drew a lot of us to it so many years ago.

Whew....I'm so exhausted now I can barely lift up my gun to go push over a 7-11....

[Scott Chaffin]

Reckon the coppers will give you an RSS feed that you can parse by ZIP?

[Bruce]

Scott I can't tell if you're kidding or serious, but it doesn't matter, that is a *righteous* idea.