Whither the Civic Journalism Bandwagon?

By Charlotte Grimes

A paper by Charlotte Grimes, spring 1998 fellow, asks whether citizen journalism is living up to its promises. Grimes provides a history of the rise of civic journalism that raises many questions about both its aims and its successes, and whether there is benefit in supplanting traditional tools and processes with newer ones. She notes how much of the popularity of the idea of civic journalism may be due to how ambiguous, sometimes all-inclusive a term it is. Ultimately, she concludes that the record of civic journalism in practice is mixed.

Download the paper (PDF).