WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM?

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM?

In answering this question, we shall explain the meaning of the words, profession, and then journalism, the concept of professional journalism and citizen journalism and lastly comparison of the two types of journalism.

PROFESSIONAL

The word professional is used as an adjective to qualify the noun ‘’Journalism’’. Professional is formed from the noun ‘’Profession’’ which according to Webster shorter dictionary means a vocation or occupation requiring an advanced education or training that involves intellectual skills. The word ‘’Professional’’, according to Oxford Advanced learners dictionary, is connected with a job that needs special training skill or high level of education. A professional has to practice his occupation according to the high standard and ethical codes. The members of the profession have to share common values, identify definition of roles and interest. They should have a set education standard, licensing and an enforcement of performance standard.

WHAT IS JOURNALISM?

Originally Journalism referred to the occupation of writing for journals but before then, citizen journalism was much practiced in the united states of America by citizens who printed pamphlets to distribute news worthy and sensitive topics. The art of journalism started as individual effort in 59BC; during the reign of Julius Caesar, the Roman Emperor. By then he employed scribes in his palace to write down events and news on sheets of paper, legislations and other interesting stories such as births, marriage and deaths. These publications were called Acta Diurma, Acta Senatus and Acta Publica respectively.

Through out the 16^th and 17^th century there was no full-time journalism or professional journalism. Individual journalism wrote and printed news and bulletins and circulated to the people by the end of 17^th century, journalism was made liable to suppression while they tried to perform the role of mouthpiece for the public in protecting their needs and problems.

PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM

By 1920s the concept of journalism shitted to involve the act of writing for journals, news papers, magazines and disseminating information for the purpose of informing people. The publishers began to call for freedom to operate and write to express their views without hindrances.

The early journalist however continued to write to criticize the authorities, to defend the citizens and to ask for recognition of their job as a profession not with standing their suppression, censorship and persecution. Most journalists became anonymous writers. This gave room to publishers like James Gordon Bennett to take publishing beyond his immediate environment. Reporters and publishers started earning a living from the job. With the advert of new technologies in printing. The press became a big business. The news became an essential commodity to the publishers until the internet was available to a large audience in the mid 1990s.

Today, there are various approaches to reporting and publishing. News can be disseminated through Radio, Television, Prints, Journals, Newspaper and Magazine. Journalism therefore can be seen as an art of earning ones living through writing for the printing and electronic media. This new media has added another dimension to current Journalism.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM

A citizen is one who has the legal right to belong to a country. Citizen journalism is also known as ‘’Public’’ ‘’guerilla’’ ‘’Participatory’’ ‘’democratic’’ or street journalism. It is different from community and civic journalism; which are practiced by professional journalists. Citizen journalism is not the same as collaborative journalism which are practiced by professional and non-professional journalists, working together. Some communities call it grass root journalism. It thieves more on new media and poses a threat to the traditional journalism.

Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content. According to Mark  Waser, a freelance journalist, ‘’The idea of citizen journalism is that the people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the internet to create augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

J.D LASICA CLASSIFIES MEDIA OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM INTO THE FOLLOWING TYPES:

·        Audience participation- Users comment attached to news stories, personal belongs, photos, videos footage captured from personal mobile cameras or local news from residents of a community

·        Independent news and information websites [consumer reports, drudge reports]

·        Full-fledged participatory reports or news site. Examples are; ‘’Now public, Ohm news, Ground report

·        Co-laboratory and contributory media sites

·        Thin medial [mailing list, email, news letter]

·        Personal broadcasting [video site like Ken Radio]

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM

In order to meet the needs of the society and report within the codes conduct and ethics of journalism as stipulated by the law of the land, people have to go to school to learn how to be a journalist. They have to observe the hard and fast rules to qualify as a professional journalist. The condition has been that sources of the news have to be verified and hard facts need to be gathered before running the news. There have to be important stories with substances before it is reported. Professional journalism therefore is the state of practicing as a journalist, observing the prescribed imperatives, the codes and ethics of the professions without breach. The journalist must have passed through a specific training and met the required standard.

According to Jerry Flew there are three elements, critical to the rights of citizen journalism and citizen media.

v    Open publishing

v    Collaborating editing

v    Distributive contents.

He explained that Wikipedia is a typical example of citizen journalism. It is the largest and the most successful citizen journalism project.

CYBER JOURNALISM: Now Public and Division of traditional media companies like CNN’s reporter feature site journalism. The irony behind citizen journalism is that, the people formerly called the audience employ the press tools; they now have in their possession to inform one another. The impacts of reporting by the people for the people generates the name ‘’Democratic journalism’’. Many academic programmes combine the study of traditional journalism with new Media and these programmes address issues of citizen voices in reporting and other forms of user created contents.

REFERENCE

Einar Thorsen (2009) Citizen journalism, Global perspective New York

  Gordon Harmitton, (2009) How to be   a citizens journalist’

www.Helum-com/knowledge/163674. How to train yourself as a citizen journalist.

www. Educouse.edu/eli (2007)

Tony Rogers(2011) what is citizen journalism “A part of New York Times company”