As the number of opportunities for citizens to get online and transform into journalists grows, so does the chance that they will make mistakes that the professional journalist otherwise wouldn’t. Take the what happened to Apple after an anonymous poster on CNN’s iReport (falsely) wrote that Steve Jobs had a heart attack. But before we all lose faith in citizen journalism, one organization is working to change the perception through time and hard work.
The World Company, which owns the Lawrence Journal-World based out of Lawrence, Kansas, in collaboration with the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas have created a “Citizen Journalism Academy” to start teaching interested community members how to blog, interview, and equips them with the tools to become journalists in their own right.
The Academy is an annual program that began in the fall of 2006 and since has been extremely successful. Students must apply to the Academy and upon acceptance are given a syllabus. Each session consists of 5 weekly 2-hour classes that are free to those accepted.
