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From Mayor Emanuel's Chicago 2011 Tweet Stream

Citizen journalists in Chicago should be skeptical but encouraged, that newly elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel is tweeting out invitations to get involved in “[E]ffective, open and accountable government.” Everyone from citizen journalists to the mainstream media will be watching to see if open, transparent interactions with the public will continue through the transition time and into his time as mayor. The site, called Chicago 2011 is functional rather than fancy, and it says:

“City government is a large and complicated set of interlocking agencies and offices, and it can be a challenge to increase public participation and motivate civic engagement. Taxpayers deserve access to their government so that they can take part in the democratic process and hold public servants accountable. How and would you make City government more open and accountable? What parts of our government could benefit the most from public involvement?”

via Effective, open and accountable government – Chicago 2011 – Mayor-Elect Rahm Emanuel.

Minicipal government in Chicago, Ill isn’t known for being open to any outsiders, from mainstream media, to citizens or citizen journalists. In fact, the when the BBC was doing a series about “extremes,” they reached out to local reporter Steve Edwards for a story about Chicago and Illinois, called  “Oiling the Machine – Uncovering Corruption in Chicago, an audio exploration of extreme government corruption.

How bad is it? Since 1971, 1,000 Illinois public servants have been convicted of corruption, and in Chicago, 30 aldermen have gone to jail according to Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who is now teaches political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In February, Chicago voters, or the 41% who turned out to vote, elected Rahm Emanuel as the next mayor. He will replace Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has been in office since 1989 Richard J. Daley, father of Richard M. also served as mayor of Chicago (1954-1976) but that is a story for another day. Emanuel’s inauguration is scheduled for May. His early actions indicate he may open up what has been the black box of information about city finances, hiring, zoning, and other matters.

Through tweets about the Chicago 2011 site, the public is being urged to go to the site and leave public comments, and get involved, during his transition time. The tweets about the site remind people they can ask questions, discuss issues, make suggestions, leave a resume, and generally keep up with the plans for Chicago under Mayor Emanuel.

As the site develops, we’ll return to it, and also track comments from Chicago’s bloggers and hyperlocal citizen media about whether it is really a break from the past in terms of transparency, or simply window dressing to cover up for “business as usual.”

The death of a citizen journalist in Libya reminds me how easy citizen journalists have it in the United States.

U.S. citizen journalists never have to fear for their lives. They never have to face censorship or reprimand, as long as they follow the laws of the land and the ethics of the profession.

They can go out in the field, ask questions and write stories they believe will inform their neighbors about the happenings in their communities and the actions of their local governments.

Such wasn’t the case for Mohammad Nabbous, described as the “face of citizen journalism in Libya,” who reportedly was shot dead by forces of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy on Saturday, March 19.

Nabbous was credited with setting up Libya al-Hurra (“freedom”) TV, which broadcast raw feeds and commentary from Benghazi on Livestream.

Nabbous isn’t the only one who has been put in danger in an effort to report the news and keep the populous informed about what is truly happening.

Seven professional journalists who had been previously captured were released on Monday and Wednesday, according to news reports. At least 10 others are still missing or being detained, including six Libyan journalists who reportedly have been critical of the government.

So, U.S. citizen journalists what’s stopping you? Please take advantage of the freedoms offered by this country. Get your notepad and go outside and start asking questions. You are lucky. You have nothing to fear.

Susan Cormier is the head coach in charge of training at the National Association of Citizen Journalists (http://nacj.us/) and co-author of the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists” (http://www.citizenjournalistnow.com/).

Citizens have been busy reporting the horrific events in Japan in recent weeks.

As Ron Ross, co-founder of the National Association of Citizen Journalists, wrote in his blog recently, many of these reports can be found on CitizenTube, YouTube’s news and politics blog.

Ross also offered some tips so citizen journalists worldwide can prepare to cover similar news events, although it is hoped it won’t happen to you. You can read his blog at: http://ronrosstoday.com/?p=384.

Susan Cormier is the head coach in charge of training at the National Association of Citizen Journalists (http://nacj.us/) and co-author of the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists” (www.citizenjournalistnow.com).

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece originally appeared in The-Latest.com and has been republished here with permission.

Marc Wadsworth – Editor at The-Latest.com

Cruise missile image given by US military to lap dog media

Not a single commentator in the British media I have seen today has stated the obvious – that the majority of the world is against the West’s unprovoked bombing of Libya.

Opposed to the massive cruise missiles raining down on Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s cities are the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China as well the 53 nation-strong African Union. Already, according to the Libyan government, more than 50 people the UN-backed aggression were supposed to be protecting have been killed.

The hypocrisy of the West’s war mongering leaders is only matched by their lap dog propagandists in big media. Bankrupt international politics has been used as a fig leaf. The rigged vote on the United Nation’s “Security Council” went 10-0 in favour of imposing a “no fly zone” over Libyan air space enforced by “all necessary measures to protect civilians”.

(The UN has never done this to protect defenceless Palestinian civilians from Israeli bombardment, on many occasions, because the Americans have always vetoed such a vote.)

Five mighty countries abstained over Libya: China, Russia – two of the five permanent members – India, Brazil and Germany. The UN vote proved that the New York-based world body is broken. Why? It demonstrated how the West, that dominates the all-powerful Security Council, cajole, bully and bribe to get the outcomes they want. Yemen were once punished by the US which withdrew millions of dollars of aid from the impoverished country when it dared to vote against it at the UN.

India, Brazil, Japan or an African nation are glaringly absent among the five  permanent members of the Security Council. And the much more representative General Assembly, that includes all the nations of the world, is ignored politically and in the big media.

What is more, the Arab League that backed the no fly zone ahead of the crucial UN vote, at the behest of US President Barack Obama and the UK’s David Cameron, is packed with the very unelected royals and despots popular uprisings by the people, supposedly backed by the West, oppose. The Arab League sell-outs are dependent on the West to stay in power. And they reward their masters in Washington, London and Paris with oil and billion pound purchases, mainly of hi-tech arms.

Added to this, the slaughter by these Arab dictators of pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain and Yemen has not triggered a Western pushed UN resolution nor military intervention precisely because “they are our allies”.

Like Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was armed to the teeth by the West in an attempt to defeat Iran and then overthrown and executed, Muammar Gaddafi has now be turned on by his former Western friends. Feisty Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has bluntly denounced the West’s attack on Libya as “a grab for oil by the imperialists”. But you will not see his comment quoted in big media.

The Goebbels machine of Fleet Street has softened up public opinion by portraying Gaddafi as a “Mad Dog” who kills his own people. Is not that what the Western-armed psychopath Suharto did in Indonesia? Gaddafi has been demonised like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe to paralyse rational public debate about a country’s sovereignty and right not to be attacked by foreign powers. And now the British military are in action we are told we must patriotically back them, despite any misgivings.

If concerns were to be genuinely overridden by an international desire to protect civilian populations then why did the West not intervene in Rwanda in 1994 when almost a million people were butchered? Or in Southern Sudan’s Darfur more recently?

The silent majority in the world must loudly protest at the murderous aggression in our name against Libya – a country that has not attacked us – otherwise who will be next? Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega are democratically-elected leaders the US wants rid of because they refuse to fall into line. So, if the dangerous precedent of Libya is allowed then why not oil-rich Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Bolivia or Nicaragua?

* Gaddafi ally Louis Farrakhan, leader of America’s Nation of Islam that supported Barrack Obama’s campaign to become US president, has spoken powerfully about his opposition to the military attack on Libya.

The problem of shrinking professional news staffs hit me personally when a friend of mine was killed in an auto accident on March 8.

The Denver Post reported the accident and his death, but it failed to follow-up the next day with an article explaining what happened and to identify the driver who caused the five-car crash.

I called the newspaper several days after the accident to request a follow-up article. At the funeral six days after the accident, friends and family were forced to speculate about what may have happened because there hadn’t been any subsequent news stories.

Lack of enough staff to cover local news is a problem we talk about a lot at the National Association of Citizen Journalists. We believe citizen journalists are part of the solution because they can help cover news when professional reporters are unavailable.

The day after the funeral, I decided it was time to put my journalism skills to work. I’ve been telling citizen journalists for years that they are needed to help cover the news. It was time for me to step up to the plate.

The first thing I did was to set my bias aside. Although I was angry that this driver led to the death of an innocent man who was sitting in traffic on his way to work, I decided I could set that anger aside in my search for the information that the victim’s friends wanted to know.

I then wrote out the questions that I wanted answered. That made it much easier to interview the police sergeant who returned my call about the incident.

The sergeant didn’t seem to care that I was a citizen journalist reporting the story. He gave me all the information he had available and noted that the investigation was continuing.

I believe I wrote the story in a straight news manner. No one reading it would know that I was a friend of the victim. I then offered my story to The Post, but my offer was politely declined.

Barry Osborne, The Post’s online news editor, said Wednesday the reporter who covered the initial accident would follow-up on the crash. He said there had been a delay because that reporter had spent the next week covering another tragic story – the killing of a policeman in Limon, Colo.

Since I haven’t seen a follow-up story yet, I posted my report on The Post’s YourHub.com website.

I hope The Post will follow up when the accident investigation is complete and charges are filed. If not, rest assured that I’ll be there to fill the void.

Susan Cormier is the head coach in charge of training at the National Association of Citizen Journalists (http://nacj.us/) and co-author of the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists” (http://www.citizenjournalistnow.com/).

Dan Gillmor on Mediactive takes the Rodney King video as the fulcrum when people realized the impact they could make with their very own video cameras. From there, citizen photo and video journalism have become more prevalent and legitimate, where the dictators of North Africa are uncomfortably finding that they can’t get away with as much as they used to.

This is an interesting read.

Rodney King and the Rise of the Citizen Photojournalist

I’ve been wondering a lot recently about why it is so difficult for individuals to find a way to make citizen journalism websites profitable.

There is an obvious answer – at least from my perspective as a former newspaper editor and reporter.

Most of those who have a desire to start or run a citizen journalism website have a journalism background. Journalists aren’t trained in sales. But they are trained to be unbiased in their reporting.

So, how can you be unbiased in your reporting when you are writing a news article about one of the major advertisers on your website?

In the “professional” news business, there usually are two different departments – one that handles the news and one that handles the sales.

In a perfect world, individuals in these two departments should not come into contact with one another. So the news writer never takes into account how much advertising one business buys. And the advertising salesman has no idea if a business is in the news.

But with a citizen journalism website, often one person handles both the writing and sales. And that person usually has a news background. It’s not an easy transition to wear both hats – reporting and writing, and sales.

My solution is as old as the advertising department in most newspaper offices around the world: Commission sales. Find someone equally passionate about your cause and hire them on a commission basis.

Surely in these days of record unemployment, someone will step up to the plate to serve as the advertising department so the original owner/operator of the website can focus on reporting and writing the news, sports and features in his/her community.

If you’d like to read about someone who actually did marketing and is making money from his website, read the recent blog written by Ron Ross, co-founder of the National Association of Citizen Journalists, at http://ronrosstoday.com/?p=374.

Susan Cormier is the head coach in charge of training at the National Association of Citizen Journalists (http://nacj.us/) and co-author of the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists” (http://www.citizenjournalistnow.com/).