The number of websites today collecting, reporting, and reflecting on news is uncountable, and continues to grow. For the optimist, this expansion shows an increase in interest in news, and, perhaps more importantly, a growing desire of citizens to interact with professional media. This interaction ranges from independently reporting on issues to critiquing the manner in which certain media organizations deliver their news.

The journalism website Poynter Online, founded by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, creates an all-encompassing forum. The site supports a news feed that draws from professional organizations and provides a blog roll, allowing professionals and citizens alike interact with the news. Its mission statement, found in the here, emphasizes the goal of creating citizen journalists who are educated, effective, and ethical.

One of Poynter’s most intriguing aspects is its dedication to educating citizen and professional journalists. Currently, many journalism institutes only offer strictly structured training, while blogging websites often avoid education and advice entirely. Poynter Online finds an appropriate balance by using numerous means—both formal and informal—to offer its professional and citizen reporters advice and training on how to be accurate, effective, and ethical journalists.

Poynter’s most structured learning is in the form of small seminars given on their Florida campus, which cover a variety to skill sets to shape budding journalists. The institute also offers Webinars, a less formal but more accessible way to learn similar skills taught in the seminars. Finally, Poynter’s staff offers blogs providing tips and strategies on effective journalism, such as Writing Tools, Visual Voice, and Supervision.

For a website like Poynter, these tools are necessary to accomplish its mission. However, other news sources less concerned with the formal studies of media and journalism may find that structured training is not central to their objective.

Would this be helpful at a place like OnEarth, I wonder? Would people be interested in an editor’s blog that offers tips on effective environmental journalism? Something like this could be informal but informative, serving as a reference for citizen journalists of any level of experience. This journalistic boost would make impassioned and informed bloggers even more effective reporters, which might help expand conversation about environmental issues.