WebProNews

Through a search feed I stumbled upon an anonymous j-blogger who goes by Bill and also calls himself "justacrazyjournalist."

He writes a weblog called "Blogging versus Journalism." On Monday he posted a terrific essay on how the media should intelligently dip their toes into participatory journalism.

""Citizen journalism" is one of those buzzwords that's hot in our industry right now. Some journalists might hope it's a fad that will go away soon, I don't think that's likely. Inviting the public to participate in online news publishing by contributing articles and photographs is likely here to stay -- indeed, it might allow journalism institutions to renew some of the public trust they've lost in recent years by inviting the public in instead of keeping them outside the ropes. Mainstream news site managers should be thinking about how to integrate the best of citizen journalism into their organizations. In this column, I hope to give you some ideas on how to do that intelligently.""

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.