Making Money from Citizen Journalism

The proliferation of citizen journalism projects, which range from individual bloggers to aggregated hyperlocal Web sites, has resulted in a rich journalistic dialogue and new voices entering the "media" fray. Unfortunately, those voices still need to pay the mortgage, and right now, no one has nailed a replicable profit model to support citizen journalism.

Enter the Center for Citizen Media, led by guru Dan Gillmor, which is starting a project to glean the best practices and different revenue sources for citizen journalism. Emerson College new media graduate student Ryan McGrady will be heading up the project, called Making a Business of Citizen Media.

You can read the intro and check out the outline for what's coming here: http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/09/24/making-a-business-of-citizen-media/. So far, it looks like they'll be exploring affiliate, pay-to-blog, membership, donation and advertising programs, among others. Naturally, the Center encourages citizen participation in the project and hopes to get feedback via posted comments, emails, etc.