A commentary at the Online Journalism Review highlights one of the big issues of 2006 and looks forward to putting it behind us in 2007.

It is about the divisive debate between “mainstream” and “citizen” journalism. One does not preclude the other.

From the column:

“‘Citizen journalism’ provides professional reporters the chance to collect many more data points than they can on their own. And ‘mainstream media’ provide readers an established, popular distribution channel for the information we have and can collect. Not to mention a century of wisdom on sourcing, avoiding libel and narrative storytelling technique.

And our readers don’t care. They just want the most complete, accurate and engaging coverage possible. They don’t how we make the sausage, or even who makes it. They just want to eat.

The debate should be over how to improve journalism, over how to find new ways of engaging with the public.

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