In the Summer 2010 edition of Expressions, Emerson College’s quarterly alumni magazine, author Allison Teixeira examines citizen journalism in her article titled “We the Media” and its role in bringing news to the masses in a more timely fashion.

Citizen journalism is a phrase that refers to people using simple tools – a camera phone, video camera, blog and the web – to upload images and stories from breaking news events to news outlets, as well as to other mediums like Youtube and Facebook.

As Teixeira focuses on recent events like the crash of a U.S. Airways plane into the Hudson River, or the protests in Iran, as prime examples where citizen journalism beat the mainstream media in breaking the news, and in both cases assisting the mainstream media in illustrating their coverage with photos and video, she also points out that this form of rogue journalism has always been in existence.

Abraham Zapruder may arguably be the most famous. Zapruder was filming the visit of President John F. Kennedy to the Dallas area and caught the president’s assassination on film. The videotape has been analyzed and shown countless times to add to or discredit the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

As technology continues to advance, and the use of the Internet grows, citizen journalism, whether you like it or not, will remain a valuable tool in how we receive our news.

Will it replace the mainstream media?

Media executives argue it won’t, as there is no means of vetting the news and its authenticity. Citizen journalists aren’t fact-checked as are your everyday reporters, and the mainstream media, also known as the Fourth Estate, has access to more sources and information than do the people who happen to be in the right place at the right time, and therefore can “advance” the story.

However true that may be, these same media executives argued 15-20 years ago that the Internet wouldn’t replace newspapers. Well, newspaper circulation has been diving over the past decade, while Internet-based news outlets pop up with added regularity. Ask the publishers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for their thoughts on this matter.

College and universities will still go about training tomorrow’s journalists, albeit in a different manner than they did in years and decades previous. Moving forward, mainstream journalists will need to rely on citizen journalists as eyewitnesses to events, but will need to swallow that very bitter pill that not only can these witnesses express in words what they saw, but they’ll be able to hand over the videotape so a television station or newspaper can have access to the images they were absent for.

Recently, Andy Rooney, of 60 Minutes described himself as a news junkie who was upset with the demise of newspapers. He’s not alone, in that many self-described news junkies feel they’ve suffered a loss as newspapers get smaller, or cease to exist altogether. News junkies need not fear, they’ll always be able to get their fix, they’re just going to access it in a different manner with citizen journalism playing an integral role.