Citizen journalism has disadvantages as well: BUT...

In order to analyze today’s media situation and citizen journalism in Lithuania, the editor of ikrauk.15min.lt news website, Renata Linkutė was interviewed. “Readers often send photos, notifications of events or sometimes just wrote one sentence in this portal. Then professional journalists can make of it a complete, high-quality article. A citizen often can be speedier, notice more interesting things, while a traditional journalist is sitting in Parliament or Government meeting,” said R. Linkutė.On the other hand, R. Linkutė said that the citizen-journalist cannot always gather all necessary information because he or she simply does not have professional journalist skills and knowledge or being in the place of incident did not dare to speak to witnesses.It is true that all electronic information needs to be treated with caution. “One misjudgement or error has the potential to escalate overnight into a cause ‘celebre’. All local journalism is now global, instantly available internationally,” is written in an article Diplomacy and Journalism.

BUT eventually…

One more thing is that NGOs also participate in citizen journalism. Kimberly Abbott, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, explains that NGOs are adapting to the changing information and communication environment: “they are becoming increasingly involved in the gathering and delivery of international news, using a range of communication channels and technologies”. NGOs face the news space challenges from bloggers and other citizen journalism.

Eventually, does too much human rights (that cause citizen journalism) coverage “burn out” the press? “Specialist journalism which relies on face-to-face contact and the constant checking of information from reliable sources will always be needed alongside the multiplying open sources of electronic information,” said Bridget Kendall.

It is thought that citizen journalism and blogs encourage journalists to search for new forms, new journalistic methods and an even more professional approach.

This is a funny video that shows differences and similarities of citizen and traditional journalism . Citizen journalists are always here to help traditional journalists do their job. It is said  that old forms of spreading news is important because people still want to know what is professional journalism, not only amateur.