Against the volume of talk about citizen journalism in 2007 there was little research into whether anyone wanted to read it. A poll on public interest in the murder trial of Robert Pickton supplied one measurement, and the answer was mostly no: only one in four people in British Columbia expressed interest in new forms of journalism covering the trial, such as blogs by citizens and by sex trade workers. About half of British Columbians over 35 were not at all interested. Among 18 to 34 year olds, 24% were somewhat interested. Across the whole sample, 3% were very interested.
There was material to be interested in. The citizen journalism site Orato had commissioned two former Vancouver sex trade workers to cover the trial, saying it would “give the fallen women a voice”, and a UBC journalism student, Catherine Rolfsen, kept a blog through the winter semester on the ethical questions the coverage raised. Both offered a view of the case that the daily papers and television bulletins did not.
The reading was not that citizen journalism had failed but that it was competing with established habits: people turn to established outlets because those fit existing patterns of news consumption. Citizen journalism was never a replacement for professional reporting, and the genuinely surprising figure was the one in four who were interested in an alternative source at all. The poll was conducted by Mustel Group for the Feminist Media Project at the UBC School of Journalism; the Pickton trial was in its sixth month, having started on 22 January 2007.