Online Forum Launches Citizen Awards

Press Gazette has announced a month-long discussion on the merits of readers’ contributions to mainstream media leading up to its second annual Citizen Journalism Awards.

The value of user-generated content and its integration into the news output from publishers and broadcasters will be among the topics to be debated on the web over the course of the next four weeks.

Press Gazette also asserted that this year’s Citizen Journalism Awards will seek to represent the wider spectrum of contributions from users after last year’s competition focused solely on photographs taken by non-professionals.

The winning entries will be selected by an expert panel, which included Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow and Nick Wrenn from CNN in 2006.

Prizes were awarded for two photographs taken in the aftermath of the 7/7 July bombings in 2005 and for a picture of the Buncefield oil depot fire taken from the air.

“At its best, citizen journalism fulfils the promise of a never-before realised democratic ideal empowering all citizens to exercise their right to free expression, particularly on issues of broad public concern,” states Press Gazette.

Further details on this story can be found here and last year’s entries including the three winning images can be viewed on the Citizen Journalism Awards website.