Citizen Bane

Somewhere along the line we’ve invented a term, “citizen journalist,” to denote bloggers and other social mediasts who report without a net. Somebody pays them a measly sum to write about stuff that’s happening around them.

When I say measly sum, I mean it–$3 to $7 per story seems to be the going rate, which works out to one or two cents per word–and this is apparently justified because the citizen journalist is under no obligation to actually get it right.

If you type fast, you can probably knock out a 200-word article in maybe 30 minutes. Assuming your “publisher” needs that many stories, then, you could turn out two articles in an hour, 16 articles per day, 120 per week. And you’d make maybe $30,000 per year, assuming you never took a vacation and never ran out of ideas. Or did any research. Or checked your facts.

Hmmm. In the good old days we called this “gossiping,” and it was done by “busybodies,” which doesn’t sound anywhere near as nice as “citizen journalist.” They did it for free, so seven bucks is definitely a step up.

i’m happy for ‘em, but I gotta wonder when “legitimate” media organizations start quoting reports by “citizen journalists.” It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish gossip from good reporting.

I suppose you get what you pay for. Sigh.

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