What with the rise of citizen journalism, certain publications have become significantly more popular. For example, IndyMedia.com is a news website entirely created by users. Anyone can upload stories to it. But it shutters in comparison to the mega giant of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia.org is a free encyclopedia of over 3 million entries. It has articles on everything from black bears to my brother, Ben. It provides a service to millions in free information, but there is a supposed downside: Anyone can alter any article at anytime. To many, this brands Wikipedia as unreliable. But is it really?
To answer this, we must look at the purpose of citizen journalism, which is to connect the journalist to the reader. In this situation, it does this by making the citizen both the journalist and the reader. While this does remove any of the typical biases and ulterior motives found in today’s journalism, it cannot guarantee any truth due to the lack of professionalism. At least that’s what critics of Wikipedia say.
In reality, most everything on Wikipedia is cited to a legitimate source and the entire site is monitored every hour of every day. Therefore, Wikipedia is a very legitimate source and is leading the drive for citizen journalism.
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