'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.

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