Over the years, the argument has been that citizen journalism broadens participatory democracy, enables strict adherence to accountability and transparency principles by the political and business leaders. As good as the genre of journalism is, there are concerns that it drives social and political disturbances. Some countries have experienced and still experiencing these.

In Nigeria, a navigational search on the Internet will give one a number of citizen journalists who are using varied blog platforms for dissemination of what they consider newsworthy and need to be reported to the public. However, Mrs Egbemode Funke, the Commissioner of Information and Civic Orientation in Osun State, is another contributor to the ongoing conversation on the negativity of the journalism practice. According to her, citizen journalists are bastardizing the present-day journalism. Her hypothesis is that if there are no citizen doctors, there can’t be citizen journalists.

Examining Egbemode’s position, our analyst notes that the current crop of citizen journalists pay attention to monetary value more than societal value, which can only be created when they understand the nitty-gritty of generating, analysing and writing newsworthy events or happenings. Our analyst further states that majority of citizen journalists and bloggers started not because they have specific value to add to the journalism profession in Nigeria, but they want to earn money like renowned bloggers at the expense of writing and reporting news as a product.

Exhibit 1: Estimated Revenue [US$] of Select Blogs in Oyo, Osun, Edo and Lagos States

Journalism Not Only About Speaking Grammar

“It’s either you’re a journalist or not. We have rules and regulations guiding every profession and if these rules are not being followed, we will get into trouble.

“Some people woke up one day because they speak English and have phones, then called themselves citizen journalists. We woke up one day and found people who are angry, just typing breaking. Because they are angry with somebody, they think that’s enough reason to start a blog and you call a blogger a journalist.

“If there are no citizen doctors, there can’t be citizen journalists. It’s the fault of all of us recognising those who were not trained for the job, who do not have passion for the profession, who see it as a tool of attack and think being a journalist gives them some kind of weapon to fight their enemies. It’s fine to be an activist but being an activist is different from being a journalist.”

Mentorship and Training Issue

“People are not willing to be mentored, they want to be CEOs on the day they graduate, they want to be called editors two years down the road but it doesn’t work like that.

“We went to journalism school apart from going to the university. You find out that what we were taught in school is not what you find in the news. You learn on the job how to ask questions, conduct interviews, how to soften the personality you’re interviewing, how to even stalk them and balance your stories. But that’s not what we are doing these days. Someone finds a story, doesn’t confirm it yet spreads it.”

What to Do?

From the insights provided by Mrs Egbemode and our analyst, it is clear that citizen journalists, especially bloggers need to stop being unprofessional. As noted, they need to learn, unlearn and relearn from journalism school and professionals in the mainstream media.  These are not enough. Having a sustainable business model, which entails value creation, delivery and capturing processes will go in a long way of averting identified unprofessional conducts. In this regard, anyone who considers the journalism genre as imperative for sustainable building of democratic and industrial institutions should seek and apply emerging knowledge.