While the Myanmar’s regime attempts to suppress the protests taking place, citizen journalists are playing a key role in delivery of the news to the rest of the world.

It was bloggers who forced CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather into early retirement, and yet CBS – at least somebody there – is still being condescending towards the new media.

With the growing popularity of the blogosphere, many people believe it could be a threat for journalists. At the Web 2.0 Expo, WebPronews caught up with Tris Hussey of One by One Media to discuss the growth of this matter. The print media, newspapers primarily, may need to make adjustments to keep up with the current trends.

Todd Defren posts a nice rundown on using del.icio.us for an online PR initiative for bzzagent. Deli.cio.us is used to create content of value to journalists covering WOMM – the word of mouth marketing industry of which bzzagent is the focus.

Whether journalists are ready or not for the social media press release, the PR community now has a great opportunity to thoroughly discuss the concept and try to get some traction with the whole idea of evolving the press release into something far more valuable than purely a vehicle for transmitting messages.

A journalist organization representing 40,000 British and Irish members announced a boycott of Yahoo! today in response to the search company’s compliance with Chinese authorities to help imprison pro-democracy reporters. The National Union of Journalists advised its members to cancel all Yahoo! operated services.

The new video service from Yahoo now matches competitors YouTube and Google Video in permitting users to upload videos to the service for sharing with others; two videos that made it to the system may be a bit embarrassing to Yahoo.

Three online journalists sued by Apple gained a victory in appeals court when judges ruled in favor of a petition filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding the protection of sources.

Here’s a good example of a mainstream medium that gets it’ concerning its journalists blogging.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the Silicon Valley PRSA blockbuster lunch and took notes. From these notes, I wrote a post for the FORWARD blog, the student-run Website and blog, for students.

Another indicator of how some mainstream media see podcasting as a big opportunity – The Daily Telegraph is advertising for two Podcast Reporters/Producers:

PRWeb CEO David McInnis in responding to my prior post about direct-to-consumer press release services is saying that there is nothing sacred or holy about journalism anymore.

Around this time last year, New York University professor Jay Rosen declared the “bloggers vs. journalists” debate closed. He cited New York Times writer John Schwartz’ own admission that “for vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs.”

The picture at the right comes from one of my favorite groups on Flickr: California Desert. I like this image in particular, because you get the sense that there are times when a path is quite clear.

Everybody’s a reporter these days and Creative Weblogging is making it easier by launching its Creative Reporter Network, a new citizen journalist system that pays (handsomely) for great news content, tips, podcasts, and video clips.

An interesting thing happened on the way to the blog. It seems there was a TV producer got an delightful story pitch through their email from a publicist. The producer promptly reviewed the dispatch and deleted it. Some ten minutes later, the publicist called the producer and interrogated the producer as to why he deleted the email after only two seconds.

Ingenious? Or a waste of precious time? You be the judge. A New York City man is utilizing Google Maps, Flickr, and the mobile camera phones of his fellow citizens to track the city’s multitude of potholes. Call it a “holey quest.” Yeah, that’s a zinger.

John Naughton, in today’s Guardian: Why I have serious doubts about the ‘citizen reporters’…

“Is there a “blog of record” that I can really trust? One where, having read one story about a matter, I can trust that the facts I now think I know are facts indeed?”…

ClickZ reports that a new study by Euro RSCG/Columbia University shows that more than 51 percent of journalists use blogs regularly, and 28 percent rely on them to help in their day-to-day reporting duties.

Before I came out to California to work at Yahoo, I watched the business and culture of Silicon Valley from a distance. I read lots of the trade rags, tech web sites, and books about early Internet companies (the Netscape era).