Eye Witness

The rise of citizen journalism has allowed readers, watchers and listeners to bear witness to event's happening around the world as if they were there, not thousands of miles away. They are the people with their camera phones snapping photos or shooting video. They don't have an agenda or a story assignment from an editor, they are merely documenting what is happening, the raw reality of the situation, and sharing it with the world. They are the eye witnesses, the real people with real ties to the community. Yes, they may not have a journalism education or any education at all, but you cannot argue with the facts.

Mainstream reporters can still get the story correct, they just don't have the same background and history with the place, people and problem that the locals do. After reading Arianna Huffington's story Bearing Eye Witness 2.0, I was surprised at the examples she gives on reporters that got their facts wrong, and didn't seem to care. It is true that the "eyewitness fallacy- the tendency for people to see, in eyewitness accounts, what they want to see" is a part of journalism. Bias is something that is constantly battled with in the journalism world. However, these journalists are giving eyewitness accounts that are far from accurate, when citizens are standing next to them with the means and motive to get the facts straight.

I hope, for journalism's sake, that what Huffingtion closed her article with is true. "New media is not replacing the need to "bear witness," it is spreading it beyond the elite few, and therefore making it harder for those elite few to get it as wrong as they've gotten it again and again -- from Stalin's Russia to Bush's Iraq."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bearing-witness-20-you-ca_b_231096.html

News21

At first glance, the independent media website News21.com does not look student generated. The layout, photos and interactive aspect combine to make the site as worthy as any mainstream media outlet.  The content is contributed by several universities and colleges in the United States, and each school has their own link off of the main site. Different schools cover different topics, such as food, politics, education and more.

Each school's page has a different layout, allowing them complete control for how they want to represent themselves and their writing. I can't pit one against another because they are all so unique and accomplish different things. As a whole, the content is well-written and the photos are descriptive, each site is easy to navigate through. However, a larger variety of content and an expanded number of participating schools could heighten the site's success in the independent media market.