OhmyNews International

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).

A San Francisco publication, SF Weekly, points out the social hazards surrounding citizen journalism. Alexia Tsotsis writes in the SF Weekly blog The Snitch:

Sometimes this new media transition thing can be so, how you say, awkward.

Awkward though it may be, the following story (assuming it is true) may have greater consequence. It follows a trend that highlights YouTube’s serious intention to develop citizen journalism. In the past few days, we’ve seen the debut of CitizenTube’s News Feed and the addition of video editing tools on the site. Here’s the latest to add to the list:

According to SFAppeal blogger Eve Batey, Google-owned video aggregator YouTube is up to some hush hush citizen journalism project here in our very own San Francisco. Apparently part of a select group of “San Francisco bloggers, writers, and digital journalists,” Batey received the below vague email earlier today…click here to see it.