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The article examines citizen journalism and its use by traditional mass media and online journalism outlets. The possibility of harnessing the resources of many individuals to produce journalism to supplement the reporting of traditional journalists moved from theory to practice in the 2000s. The start-up period saw many reverses, as the first attempts to make citizen journalism an ongoing enterprise met unanticipated problems with organizing and managing large numbers of volunteer participants. Two examples are provided of citizen journalism which surmounted those difficulties, a regular feature called "Get Published," which provides local news to the "Cincinnati Enquirer" newspaper, and the "Off the Bus" feature of the Web site The Huffington Post, which offered coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

The article presents information about the "Team Watchdog" of "The News-Press." After the newspaper utilized crowdsourscing to enhance reporting, Team Watchdog was formed to improve investigative reporting and further involve the community. The team focused on various topics including a database of day-care inspection reports, the use of taxes for services and time-out rooms utilized to discipline students with disabilities. It is mentioned that editors and reporters got to work well with members of Team Watchdog. Online research is also done by the team.

The article focuses on hyperlocal news Web sites created by citizens to provide information to communities and social networks whose size prevents them from being covered by traditional mass news media. The Web sites serve communities ranging in size from Dutton, Montana, population 375, to teenagers living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The sites examined were founded in part thanks to grants from the Knight Foundation and the University of Maryland journalism school. The organizers of the sites are surveyed, and almost all are highly positive about the experience and optimistic about the future success of the Web sites. Costs of the projects are very low, so the organizers do not rate them though conventional business metrics. Most do wish to generate enough revenue to be able to pay their contributing reporters.

The article focuses on the management of the editorial pages of the locally zoned editions of "The Dallas Morning News" newspaper in Dallas, Texas. Each section has volunteer editorial columnists called "Community Voices" who express opinions on matters of interest to their specific communities. The process of selecting the columnists is described. The newspapers' attempts to give their selected volunteers a feeling of participation in its operation, including attending editorial board meetings and other non-monetary benefits are given. The program is most popular with readers and has allowed the newspaper to present novel treatments of often-discussed topics.

A reprint of the article "Are Reporters Doomed" published in the November 12, 2007 issue of "The Guardian" is presented. It focuses on citizen journalism and the adoption of new media in journalism. It is mentioned that media companies are likely to have fewer employees in the future whose responsibility will be to process reports from freelancers, bloggers and citizen journalists. It also discussed the use of the Internet and the role of reporters.

The article presents a first person account of the founding and operation of a hyperlocal news Web site devoted to covering Chicago, Illinois. The author, a former investigative reporter for "The Chicago Tribune" newspaper, left his job in 2005 convinced there was a need for such a service due to the many areas of the city's political, economic, and social life which were not adequately covered or covered at all by the newspaper, Chicago's largest. The author frankly admits having a very vague idea of what such a Web site might be when he first met with volunteers for the project in late 2005. He describes how the enthusiasm and expertise in various subjects of those volunteers enabled the Web site to begin operating much sooner than was expected. Two years later, the Web site is visited by 15,000 persons a mongh, has 75 regular contributors who cover some aspect of Chicago, and has received a grant from the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation to expand its operations. The author is proud of the Web site's progress, but notes that Internet advertising, an important part of the site's original business plan, has so far produced almost no revenue.

The author discusses how reporting standards and skills and publishing tools can be used by citizen journalists. He questions why there were few amateur journalists using the Twitter and other social media networks as an easy-entry platform for citizen journalism. He notes that rural journalism suffers from a shortage of trained experts who can monitor warning signs and try to prevent a crisis.

The author offers opinions on journalism. He describes his dual roles as a reporter for the "Lawrence Journal-World" newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas and a member of Street Team '08, an Internet-based team of citizen journalists covering the U.S. presidential election for MTV News. The conflicts between producing impartial news coverage and producing controversial material which will be more widely viewed on MTV's Web site are described. The author states his policy is not to produce reporting which could not also run in his newspaper.