Saturday, January 21, 2012

You can sponsor another citizen reporter

Will Hider is another citizen reporter who has gained tremendous notoriety lately for his remarkable photography talent. He puts his work up online so that all of us may freely browse it, some of it certainly takes on more of a "reporting" task, whilst other works tend more on the "artistic" side.

Nonetheless, he is definitely a hard-working citizen reporter, and his medium is a little more expensive than blogging and activism. He has recently came out with a fundraising goal, and I certainly want to support his goal however I personally can. I think his quest to find micro donations within the community is a great idea. I might also mention he doesn't go out on controversial limbs like some people do...

Will has told me I could use his photos on this blog, and while they're all excellent, I just haven't gotten around to picking the ones I like best.

Citizen reporting is vital because we know that not only can we not rely on traditional media as our only news source, but we also know that citizens can do reporting better in some cases. They also lack the bias of traditional media outlets, and the need to CYA (cover your...) as well. Citizen reporters also harness social media and other trends far better than traditional journalists, and while I believe that the good journalists such as Lackmeyer need our support as well in these challenging times, I believe strongly in citizen reporting, obviously. That's the genre I consider myself to be in. Sometimes in order for citizen reporting to compete and grow into its own, they need access to the equipment that the traditional journalists are blessed to have. That's where Will's fundraising hopes come in to play, and that's why I want to help him out.