Citizen Journalism Exercise (Part ll)

Ah the good ol’ Examiner, or Irish Examiner as its referred to round these parts. Analysing the website with regard to the addition of participatory journalism features will be like asking a trusted old friend if he might need some plastic surgery. Its both innapropriate and frankly, quite insulting.

But this is the way online media is going and change they must. The website itself is highly restrictive on interactivity of any kind and seems to abhor the thought of mere citizens contributing to its news agenda or content.

There is no linking, no facility for readers to post comments, and no section which encourages reader’s to submit their pictures or other types of media. Its almost as if there is an “if you don’t work for us, we don’t want it” attitude in play.

Areas where there is the potential for participatory or citizen journalism are everywhere throughout the website. Things which could be considered would be forums for readers to discuss issues raised on th website’s news section, an area where readers can upload images, or videos or stories, or the facility whereby readers could access a page catering for their locality and edit the page in a similar fashion to wikipedia.