Seniors & teens bring personal experiences to Web publishing

This column — my last for AJR — appeared in the July-August 1999 issue of The American Journalism Review.

Where will online journalism be in five or 10 years? In the hands of more and more regular folks, who may not even think of themselves as journalists.

The Internet has long held out the ideal of Everyman as publisher — ordinary citizens who take back journalism from the professional class. As the Web matures, we’re starting to see a flourishing of community journalism, a phenomenon that has both distant roots and a promising future.

“The news consumer is turning into a news provider,” says Walter Bender, associate director of the MIT Media Lab. “It’s not that these news consumers will compete with the New York Times, but the consumer becomes part of the process of telling stories in a way that enriches the public discourse.” [Read more…] about Citizens as budding reporters and editors