Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism is what the future is all about. Yet the question remains: how do we know if what we get is legitimate? The Huffington Post’s Off the Bus project directed by Marc Cooper is trying to break out of the illegitimacy mold. The simple purpose of the project is to cover politics in the digital age. And that’s no easy task. “What we are finding is that we can do journalism with crowd sourcing,” said Cooper. The Post distributed research among crowds of users in ‘loosely defined communities,’ in an efforts to get to the real people. Old rules are broken in this new era of online journalism. In essence, everyone can be a journalist, but, as Cooper points out, the importance of having bodies on the ground transcends the slightly anxious task of editing self-defined citizen reports. Heated discussions ensue on the point of the traditional values of journalism. Are the strict guidelines and standard structure of current mainstream journalism hurting the core of reporting?
The Post prides itself with an understated notion of transparency as opposed to the claim of solid and inalienable truth. What is, then, the level of transparency? Open bias?