'Contributing Writers' instead of 'Citizen Journalists' add to the conversation at the Bakersfield Californian

I had the chance to ask Ray Hacke, Citizen Journalism Editor at The Bakersfield Californian, some questions about their relatively new Your Words project.

From the post:

I like the fact you used the term ‘contributing writer’ – did you consciously stay away from the citizen journalist term? If so, why?

Actually, we did choose to stay away from the term “citizen journalism.” The reason was that we wanted average readers – people who have little to no writing experience whatsoever – to feel like they could have a voice in our paper, too. The word “journalist” has some heavy connotations to it – we felt people might hear it and think they’d have to have some formal training or be thoroughly knowledgeable about grammar, spelling, style, etc., to write for us. We figured that might scare them off, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Our overriding mantra for citizen journalism is, “Journalism is a conversation,” and we want people from all walks of life to sit down at the table and join in. So far, we’ve actually been pretty successful in that regard — we’ve gotten contributions from writers as young as 12 and as old as 90, from janitors as well as doctors.

Yahoo hires sports editor from LA Times

Ever since Yahoo News moved its editorial operations to Santa Monica, the company’s been on a hiring tear through newsrooms across Southern California. Yahoo’s picked off staffers from latimes.com and this week snagged what might be its most prominent hire from The Times yet.

Dave Morgan, the number two editor in the paper’s sports department, will be the new Executive Editor at Yahoo Sports, in a move announced yesterday by The Times. (You can read the memo on the unofficial internal communication blog of The Times’ newsroom — Kevin Roderick’s LAObserved.)

Award a style point to Times Sports Editor Bill Dwyre for tweaking Morgan’s new employer, in final line of his memo:

“And remember, if he changes his phone numbers, you can always Google him.”

Moor named AME at Orlando Sentinel

The Orlando Sentinel today promoted OrlandoSentinel.com editor Anthony Moor as Associate Managing Editor/Online for the newspaper. The move makes Moor a direct report to Sentinel editor Charlotte H. Hall on website editorial content.

In October, Moor was elected to the board of the Online News Association. He also has served as a judge for the Online Journalism Awards and has written for OJR.

Assigning website editors AME status within the newsroom appears to be gaining popularity within the Tribune Co. In October, the Los Angeles Times, another Tribune paper, appointed Joel Sappell Assistant Managing Editor and Executive Editor, Interactive, where he oversees editorial content on latimes.com.