In my last blog entry, I discussed what citizen journalism was, the ways to go about it, and its significance in the world of media. Since then, I have done some research on the ways in which people, organizations, and companies are promoting and regulating citizen journalism.

Just as there are many views on what exactly citizen journalism is, there are a number of opinions on how the organizing body should regulate it. These opinions range from complete independence to regulations for credibility and, some cases, to paying citizens to report on news.

For many people, citizen journalism is founded on the idea of independent reporting and breaking away from mainstream media. What you might call “foundationalist citizen journalists” are intent on keeping their reporting independent, and therefore maintain their own blogs or websites, often avoiding an overseeing company or organization all together. Other people with these similar opinions may use organizing websites that bring together citizen journalists, but allow them to freely post on whatever they wish, with limited or no regulation of the content.

Other journalists—both citizen and professional—feel that in order for citizen journalism to be practical and credible, an overseeing organization or company must place some form of regulation on the reporting. These can involve topic suggestions, post approval, post editing, and/or a number of other measures.

Months ago, IJNet (the International Journalists’ Network) wrote up a review of GroundReport, a citizen journalism website that pays its reporters for their work. GroundReport—started by a professional journalists—aims to provide incentive for credible citizen journalism with payments. The site also has professional editors who filter and edit content.

In response to IJNet’s post, GroundReport points out the following strategies:

- Anyone can flag any article or video, and report abuse of GroundReport's guidelines

- Every reporter has a rating, out of five stars, that shows her average report rating over all time

- Every reporter has a profile that details all of his past work, as well as credentials

- Most crucially, GroundReport is eternally thankful for our hard-working core of selective Editors. Editors are professionally trained and can edit and flag any piece of reporting on GroundReport.com

I remain conflicted over if and how citizen journalism should be regulated. It seems logical that in order for this form of journalism to be reliable, it should be filtered to prevent spam, inaccuracies, or outright lies. On the other hand, the movement of citizen journalism came about because of the public’s desire to take reporting back into their own hands. Some citizen journalists (including one commenter on the IJNet review) go so far as to be suspicious of any media “policing.”

My gut tells me that there exists a balance between freedom and regulation. I think that, for practical purposes, a company or organization should oversee the reporting (as happens here at OnEarth, and a number of other sites). This mainly should weed out spam and inappropriate posts. Genuine content, however, should be respected as much as possible, and citizens should have the opportunity to report on whatever they feel is most important.

I have to admit, though, that since I’m new in the field, I haven’t fully made up my mind of what might work best…