Week 10 - Researching Feature Article

This week I have been researching and interviewing people for my feature article, which is on the evolution of citizen journalism. So far I have interviewed Steve Outing, who is the author of the article "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism" through Skype as he lives in Colorado. Steve is a journalist, consultant and leader in the online media industry, news innovation and digital transformation. I have a ten minute interview with him which was very interesting and gave me some insight into how citizen journalism has affected professional journalism, and where it may be headed in the future.

While talking with Steve he mentioned Janis Krums, who became possibly one of the most famous citizen journalists after he took the first photograph of a crash in the Hudson River in Florida, and then uploaded it to Twitter. Information and the famous picture can be viewed here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/us-airways-crash-rescue-picture-citizen-jouralism-twitter-at-work

Moments after the picture was uploaded to the popular social networking site, major news organisations picked up the story and later used Janis Krums as an eye witness. This all happened in January of this year, and I think it may be one of the first times Twitter has been seen as useful in reporting news. I thought this was extremely interesting, and a bit of a breakthrough for citizen journalists so I emailed Janis Krums, not really expecting him to reply but thinking that it couldn't hurt. I was very happy and surprised when he did reply and offered to answer any questions that I had. I have sent these questions and I am awaiting a reply. I feel that having him as an interviwee would be great, as he will have some great annecdotes, and I can also use his picture of the plane crash as an image to go with my feature article, along with his twitter page.

I have also interviewed Stuart Roach, recently retired sports editor for the Newcastle Herald, who gave me some interesting insight on what it is like for an older professional journalist to compete with the growing technology and rise of citizen journalism.

So far my article is still in the beginning stages, and I have a lot more people to interview, but so far I am very happy with how it is going.