Over on the pregnancy celebrity blog I publish, Bellyitch, there is a feature story today about an MLB pitcher’s wife who got caught talking smack and saying mean things about Phillies fans to a blogger who posted the comments on her blog. Sandy Madson, wife of MLP relief pitcher Ryan Madson said she was set up. Her excuse? She didn’t know she was talking to a journalist. The blogger said she did in fact identify her blog on more than one instance during the chat. In that post, I include my thoughts:
Many people in the limelight including celebrities, politicians and others need to realize we are in an era of citizen journalism where anyone with a flip cam, iPhone, cameraphone, pad and pen can report on news. There are 126 Million blogs out there, as of January 2010. This is also an age when more and more people from different demographics look to and rely on information from bloggers they trust and who are not beholden to corporate bosses and advertisers. In a nutshell, an appropriate policy would be to respect bloggers as much or maybe even more so than the national news outlet, in some instances.They have to watch their back.
Hopefully, most bloggers and citizen journalist follow the Code of Citizen Journalism Ethics published by the journal of Online Journalism. But in any event, everyone these days is a journalist and the sooner people who are accountable to the public respect “so called blogger journalist” like so many people like to refer to us in disdain, the better they are off. Better yet, perhaps they should keep undermining us and our abilities and that way we can continue to bring readers unfiltered advice, news and information. I mean, ask Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gadhafi and many other of the Middle Eastern leaders who have been thwarted by the efforts of citizen journalists and bloggers lately? Stories about citizen journalism have been reported on sites like Huffington Post’s Best Citizen Journalism of 2009; and recently an Indian woman citizen journalist scooped a journalism innovation prize. Aggregate sites like Alltop and Sourcewatch list and compile citizen journalist sites worldwide.
Taking over the world, one scandal, corrupt leader, breach of transparency at a time. Cue Akon & DJ Khaled!
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
