Dan Gillmor plans to establish a non-profit center to support grassroots citizen journalism in 2006, and will be affiliated with UC Berkeley and Harvard University.
The potentials for citizen journalism, in terms of impact and the current state of media and reporting, have been and will continue to be debated for some time. Gillmor blogged about how he’s going to try and give citizen journalism a home.
The Center for Citizen Media should launch next year according to Gillmor’s post. In addition to being a non-profit endeavor, Gillmor wrote that the project “is a nonpartisan initative. I aim to help anyone, regardless of political views, who has a constructive project and who is interested in expanding the reach of citizen media in (a) principled way.”
Gillmor noted that his office would be at Berkeley, where he is a teaching fellow, and would visit Harvard Law School on a monthly basis as a research fellow to work with students and faculty there. He posted more about his forthcoming travels and the rationale behind the center:
We also plan to sponsor regular gatherings at both locations (and, I hope, elsewhere in my travels) for people interested in citizen journalism.
Why do this? We need a thriving media and journalism ecosystem. We need what big institutions do so well, but we also need the bottom-up — or, more accurately, edge-in — knowledge and ideas of what I’ve called the “former audience” that has become a vital part of the system. I’m also anxious to see that it’s done honorably and in a way that helps foster a truly informed citizenry.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
