Free Lance Journalism, Citizen Journalism

 Free Lance Journalism, Citizen Journalism

Freelance journalism is a distinct type of journalism, different from most other forms of more traditional journalism. What exactly is freelance journalism, and how does it differ? Read on for the scoop.

Traditional Journalism and Freelance Journalism

Journalism itself is simply defined as the generation of news for the public. “Generation” here can include reporting, editing, writing, observing and recording, or broadcasting news matters. Done traditionally, this line of work was always carried out wholly by an organization. In other words, every reporter, writer, photographer, or any other worker in the news or journalism business was directly employed by the organization which would ultimately broadcast that news to the public.

Today however, there is a new type of journalism which is becoming steadily more common. This new kind of journalism, freelance journalism, is done on a freelance, or contractor, basis. This means that rather than working directly for the broadcasting organization, the reporter, writer, photographer, or other worker works self-employed as a contractor and then provides their work to the broadcasting organization in a pay-per-piece manner. In this way, a journalist can take newsworthy photographs or report on current news matters and then sell that material to the broadcaster for their own use from that point on. Whether or not that original worker is credited at the end of the process is entirely up to the agreement they reach when selling that material to the broadcaster.

Benefits

Those working as freelance journalists today do see some great advantages to this approach that are not seen in traditional work arrangements here. Freelancers can largely determine their own hours and determine which news subjects they would like to cover and how. They also get the benefit of choosing their own tools and methods and exactly which broadcasting organizations they’d like to deal with as well as exactly to what extent. With this all said, freelancers are essentially their own bosses at the end of the day.

What is Citizen Journalism?

The concept of citizen journalism is based on citizens who play a dynamic role in the process of news collecting, reporting, editing, and distributing it to other public. It is different from professional journalism and traditional reporting. This kind of journalism needs no graduation from a professional course. The requirements are simple. The citizen has to have a camera or good writing skills and more importantly a social media account.

In simple terms, Citizen Journalists:

  • Are not professionals, but they produce and publish news
  • Are people outside the mainstream media organizations?
  • Are people who were “audience” yesterday
  • They simply write the news from their perspective.

Citizen journalism is also called as:

  • Personal publishing
  • Networked journalism
  • Participatory journalism
  • Open source journalism
  • Citizen media
  • Grassroots media
  • Bottom-up journalism
  • Hyperlocal journalism
  • Stand-alone journalism
  • Distributed journalism
  • Nonmedia journalism
  • Guerrilla journalism

History of Citizen Journalism:

With high-quality cameras and the fastest internet facilities, citizen journalism has become easier today. But, it all started with 727 citizens in South Korea. Being dissatisfied with the traditional media and their reporting, the Korean entrepreneur, Oh Yeon Ho’s declared that “Everybody is a reporter” in the year 2000. Unable to bear the costs of hiring reporters for a professional news medium, OhmyNews, a news website was started. The specialty of this website was, any person could write and report the news. Gradually, the count of the citizen reporters and the news started to increase and it was noted that the reporters count touched 50,000 plus in the year 2007. Citizen journalists from 100 countries reported.

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