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Everyone's heard of a citizen's arrest. I'm not even
sure if it's real or even legal to do but we all take it
for granted that it does exist and more importantly, it
does happen. It's a powerful notion and it's a notion
of community policing that pretty succinctly mirrors the
Zipper local news and local gossip as it applies to the
source of information. The equivalent that we want to
look at that of citizen journalist. Let's find out what
that term means and why there's a new kind of power over
local news in the hands of everyday citizens.
First, what is a citizen journalist? Basically, it's
where any citizen can accumulate, report on, and provide
local news. Providing news is no longer just the
responsibility or auspices of professionals. Think of
what this means and more importantly, how the internet
with components such as the Zipper local news app.
Everything is now on the table and the filtering of
available news has gone away. This changes everything
in a few different ways. Let's look at how the advent
of online citizen journalism with tools like the Zipper
change the entire equation. Let's look at a specific
situation where citizen journalism brings an important
local news story to light.
What
if there a local news story that should be told but the
powers that be don't want it told. You would like to
hope this doesn't happen any more and belongs more on
Boardwalk Empire or The Wire. Maybe there's a large
company that's buying up a large piece of public land
from the government in order to develop it. You might
know about this info because you're the adjoining
neighbor to the piece of property. The odd piece of the
local news story being told no where is that the price
paid by the big company is about 60% of the value of the
land and guess what...the purchasing company is a very
large supporter of the current elected officials. I
know...big shocker. There's a good chance this story
will never make the local news and if so, it will be
buried down with a small aside and the company's
espousing all the good they plan do with the difficult
property. The news press can always fall back on the
excuse that the public is not interested in the real
estate dealings in all their minutia and to some extent,
this is a valid argument. This type of deal probably
occurs in some fashion or another all the time but it
just doesn't get much scrutiny from the local press
because after all...it's pretty mundane to the typical
reader and won't attract "eyeballs" and conversely,
advertisers. This economic filter (at it's best) does
not apply with citizen journalists. People might be
more aware or interested if that neighbor reports on the
40% difference from market the government is losing
(which means the public is losing) to the tune $14M.
That might spark their attention since the local library
is being closed because of a $50K annual budgetary hole.
The
Zipper local news app takes advantage of this kind of
citizen's journalism to bypass the powers that be and
in doing so, frees up many local news stories to
actually be told. When we're all journalists, there's
no hiding for powers that look to take advantage of the
social contract that we all benefit from.
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