User Generated Content in the Newsroom: Professional and Organisational Constraints on Participatory Journalism

It's worth reading this paper. A good contribution by Steve Paulussen. This is somewhat the beginning of the article about user generated journalism.

Since authors like Dan Gillmor (2004) welcomed the trend of ‘grassroots’ or ‘citizen journalism’ with great enthusiasm, some me dia experts began to suggest somewhat optimistically that a new form of ‘partici patory journalism’ was likely to emerge. Proponents of participatory journalism call all for a radical change in professional journalism in order to meet the princi ples of citizen-generated media. It is argued that professional journalists will inc reasingly have to share their control over the news production process with their users, who are becoming more and more actively involved in the creation of content. This could not only result in an increased use of user generated content by journali sts, but it could also stimulate collaboration between professional and amateur jour nalists. In other words, journalism will fundamentally shift from a top-down lecture to an open conversation (cf. Paulussen et al. 2007)