Used to be, we needed people who owned big printing presses or big towers in order to be journalists.  But today, when most people are getting their information online, anyone can publish content.

The business of big media is watching their stocks fall, while watching the rise of citizen journalists.  But what is a citizen journalist, and what makes them different from professional journalists.  Even SPJ, the largest organization of professional journalists, struggles for that definition.

Serena Carpenter gives the best one I’ve seen:

“An individual who intends to publish information meant to benefit a community.”

Serena even explains her definition, by reaching into decades-old First Amendment law, then concludes:

“This means citizen journalists and traditional journalists fall under the definition of a journalist,” Carpenter says. “Not every person is a journalist, but any citizen can become one.”

I just ran across this post on Mashable. If you don’t read Mashable regularly, you should. Add it to your feed reader today.

Okay, now back to the real reason I’m posting today on my day off.

There’s a new service called Feed Chronicle that pulls feeds from various sources and puts them in a newspaper layout on your screen.  The full name is: “Feed Chronicle:The Collaborative Newspaper,” and it’s still in Beta.  All of th big online news sources seem to be present, but you can also suggest additional feeds.

I’m too short on time to share my thoughts on it at the moment but I have toyed with it for the last 10 or 15 minutes.  I do find it interesting that people may no longer want the physical paper in their hands, but they want the layout.

I know you have something to say about this. Check it out and leave a comment.

Angela Connor