Citizen Journalism: The Current

For my critique on citizen reporting websites I critiqued Current. I had no clue what Current was until this assignment. The website overall, did a decent job explaining what Current is, how it works and how their current journalism program works.

The main purpose of Current’s website is to connect young people with what is happening in our world, focusing primarily on what they have to say and their opinions.

Current from what I saw has traditional and non-traditional stories. The stories to me seem to be more of interest stories versus hard news stories. People can put up stories that interest them while also adding their perspective and viewpoints. The website has a variety of stories that fall under specific headings. Some examples of the headings are: news, music, tech, earth and science, movies etc.

The stories themselves seem to be more biased because again people are posting them based on what they like or dislike. The comments people make on the stories posted have more of a balance though. Some of the comments posted by people argue against the story while others support the main theme of the story.

Current’s Collective Journalism team is the group that hosts the sight. Anyone can submit a pod to be considered by Current’s Collective Journalism Team. If you submit a pod you then can do an assignment on the Current Journalism page and if it gets aired you become part of the team. I couldn’t find one specific person who operates this site though. I assumed that the Current’s Collective Journalism team ran the website. The role of the team is to review what is being posted and provide stories that might spark some attention. Having the Collective Journalism team is a good thing I think because it allows for people to filter the information before it is posted. The team can also check for accuracy and timeliness.

On this website there are a large number of voices. There is not just one section though that shows who blogs. There are a bunch of bloggers who upload stories or pictures. Almost all of the bloggers who post stories provide where they got their information from as well as a link to the source. Having a link to where the information was taken from is helpful if someone else wants to go and find more information about a topic or if they want updates on the topic. Besides the websites and links of where the bloggers got their information from I did not see any experts quoted. I don’t necessarily see this as bad as long as the blogger is providing some type of attribution.

I personally don’t think it is easy for everyday citizens to post on this website. I had a very difficult time navigating the website and figuring out where one would go if they wanted to add a story. People don’t want to feel lost when they are on websites. When people feel confused many times they will find another website that is easier to navigate and never come back to the other website. Even though it was hard to figure out how to post a story, it was easy to comment on one because under each post there was a response button. It was also easy to share a story with someone if one wanted to; all they would have to do is click the share button.

I think you can learn some new things from this website. It is updated constantly and along the right hand side of the website is a list with related stories that were posted previously. The website also does not focus on just one topic. Topics are very broad ranging from politics to music videos making it more attractive to all types of audiences.

Overall, the website could be more organized. There is stuff everywhere making it hard to figure out what you want to look at and where to find a story if you are looking for something in particular. The stories are relevant to what is going on today; I just think the website can make tabs with drop down boxes to make it easy to access something.