Most news media continually battle against rising costs, a significant element of which is editorial staff. So, why pay for a full staff complement of salaried journalists and R3.50 to R5.00 a word for professional contributors, when there are millions of amateurs out there happy to send their videos, photographs and articles in for free? It's already happening with one of the world's largest new agencies, NowPublic of Canada, producing 500 stories a day with a handful of paid professionals and thousands of unpaid amateur hacks the world over falling over themselves just for the sheer glory of it.
And let's face it, who better to do the job because as recent events, such as the London Bombings and Sadaam Husseins' execution, have shown, it's always the ordinary guy who is in the right place at the right time and never ever the pros.
So, it seems to me that the news media can save themselves a bundle by harnessing this resource. Of course, it needs to be managed otherwise it will end up with the inmates running the asylum or the equivalent of having a plumber whip out your appendix.
But, most interesting of all, the concept of citizen journalism is nothing new. At least 50 years ago, a little newspaper on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast decided to dispense with editorial staff and go this route. The South Coast Herald divided its editorial pages into two dozen or so geographic areas that precisely matched their distribution area. Then they got ordinary folk in each area to send in reports of hatches, matches, dispatches and other parochial news.
The South Coast Herald has won numerous small newspaper awards over the years. I haven't seen a copy for a few years now but I presume it is still going strong as one of the most read and successful community newspaper. Total staff? A manager, a sub-editor and a few office staff.
Something else that media should be excited about is that, in spite of their penchant in recent years for insisting that all new editorial staff had journalism degrees, the fact of the matter is that good journalists, good reporters and good writers are not made – they are born with their talents.
Which means that there are literally millions of highly talented people with no experience whatsoever but capable of doing the job a lot better than some university graduate journalists who should really have been lawyers or accountants.
It is going to be interesting to see just how organised journalism regards the threat to their ranks of citizen journalism and widespread blogging. After all, this is a bit like letting neighbourhood watch members take over police stations.
Should salaried journalists and freelance professionals be nervous about all this? Or, should they just take up the challenge and lift their game?
