• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 22, 2005

The University of Missouri Journalism School's recent experiment with a "citizen journalism" site--which combines journalism's rigorous vetting process with the freewheeling nature of blogging--has yielded several new insights into how consumers view such sites, according to a recent study describing the pilot program.

Among the study's conclusions is that consumers who participate in "citizen journalism" sites, also known as "open source" publications, don't want to replicate their more traditional counterparts. "Readers and potential contributors are not interested in a rehash of events and issues that are already covered ad nauseum by the city's other news media. Rather, they are interested in issues that go largely ignored on the nightly news," states the study, "My Missourian: A case study of open source journalism." The report was recently presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in San Antonio.

The report was based on an experiment with open-source journalism at the University of Missouri that began in October 2004, with the creation of the "My Missourian" site. The site invited contributions from community members, but was staffed by editors who checked articles for grammar and style, and made decisions about whether they were libelous or indecent. Otherwise, the writers could submit just about anything they wanted, and it was all published as long as it met libel/decency standards.

Although the site was launched just one month before the presidential election, contributors had little interest in writing about national politics. Even when the site's editors tried to rustle up contributions by writing about politics themselves, consumers didn't take the bait.

But contributors were spurred into action when a local policewoman, Molly Bowden, was shot to death. The killing prompted the site's editors to create a special section dedicated to her, which received more than 10 contributions in two days--"the greatest number of contributions to the Web site in that time period," according to the study. One article, "National Thoughts and Prayers for Officer Bowden," received more than 542 page views, making it the most popular article in the site's history.

The report also concluded that open-source sites are "finding popularity with the newspaper industry." For example, stated the paper, on April 1, Morris Communications launched an open source Web site to promote its new free circulation daily newspaper in Bluffton, S.C.