• by Oly Fernando , September 23, 2011

Much as we have all pledged our undying commitment to our media-related jobs, we may soon be joining our forgotten travel agent friends with the rise of citizen journalists. These savvy smartphone-carrying boys, girls, moms and dads next door are the future of media. CNN may be the only media conglomerate that officially recognizes this through its iReport segment, but citizen journalism is undoubtedly growing through blogs, contributing writers and most recently, YouTube.

Ten years ago, the tragedy of 9/11 showcased the real value of citizen journalism. The unexpected attacks, combined with New York City's eager video-taping tourists allowed average citizens - and not media practitioners - to document history. Since then, citizen journalism has recorded petty crimes, animal attacks, consumer injustices and most recently, Arab Spring revolutions. In times when events are unannounced or when a genuine "public opinion" is politically censored, citizen journalists have an unparalleled advantage over traditional media means.

There is, however, one particular reason why citizen journalism has not become as prevalent as one would expect, and that is because of the lack of quality of these amateur videos. Who actually wants to watch a 48-second video three times before spotting the political figure who violently attacks a protester in a sea of thousands of people? Luckily, this citizen journalism shortcoming is now being addressed through several consumer video-editing programs.

Two weeks ago, YouTube announced that it will now offer simple editing features including video rotation, trimming, and picture quality adjustments. In addition to simple editing tools, WeVideo, a company that launched last week, also offers collaborative video editing, which allows multiple users to upload videos to the same URL and edit the videos together. These breakthroughs eliminate the barriers associated with traditional video editing such as cost, complexity and computing resource requirements.

It is inevitable for citizen journalism to radically take off in the next few years. It's as if the stars are aligned for these citizen journalists: More smartphones, better HD video capturing capabilities, faster Internet to upload with and pioneering video editing technology have all come together to take revenge on every censorship barrier that there ever was.

That being said, the only logical thing to do is to align ourselves with citizen journalists instead of trying to suppress them. After all, we all have the right to free speech.

Oly Fernando is an accounts coordinator at Social Radius: Las Vegas