Interesting piece in The Christian Science Monitor:
If you click onto MSNBC.com for political updates, a month from now you may get some of your news from a fresh-faced, accordion-playing college sophomore named Nathan Robinson.
One of five finalists in a contest sponsored by MSNBC.com, NBC News, and MySpace, Mr. Robinson finds out Tuesday if he'll be one of two citizen journalists covering either the Democratic or Republican convention for MSNBC.com. For him, it's a chance to liven up mainstream journalism. For MSNBC, it's an attempt to bring a new perspective to the news.
Stuck with rising competition from Internet-mediated news, traditional media have been reaching out to Web-savvy citizen journalists to expand their online audiences. But only this year have major television networks and their web affiliates begun carving out reporting slots for nonprofessionals on one of their marquee topics: the presidential election.
Who knows, of course, what the quality of this product will be--and if it's MSNBC, it's likely to swing left. But still, it's an interesting idea.
