Following up on that, could facilitation and guidance of citizen journalism efforts by representatives of traditional news organizations in a new sort of “pro-am” approach help bring about this elevation of the citizen media?
I am not convinced that a so-called “pro-am” approach to news coverage is the best remedy for the problems that I mention above. To the extent that weblog writers tend to mimic the news reporting and commentary of mainstream news media, rather than engage in their own, independent news coverage, I believe the best approach would be to try to keep mainstream news media and blogs as separate as possible. If we are to broaden the domain of news coverage beyond that provided by mainstream news media, it would be much better to encourage weblog writers to build up their own, independent news gathering and reporting entities. In the best of worlds, mainstream news media and weblog writers would not collaborate on news coverage. Rather, weblog writers would become so independent and powerful that their news coverage would force mainstream news media to truly take note of them and to enlarge their own news coverage in light of their contributions. In Habermasian terms, the multitude of weblogs in the “periphery” of the political public sphere would become so powerful that they would influence the functioning of the mainstream news media occupying the “center” of the political public sphere.
I think it's important to acknowledge the development of a complex news ecology, where some mainstream news organizations incorporate more and more citizen voices in their work -- iCNN, BBC, Guardian, The New York Times -- and others do not. Some citizen sites mimic traditional news practices are others do not. Some organizations form around communities of interest and others turn hyperlocal. Will there be a "center" to the political public sphere of the future?
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