To some it inspires fear, to others it is the very future of journalism. It it of course citizen journalism. For the web 2.0 community and more modern journalists it cannot come quickly enough. But, for the old guard of journalism, and even for many journalism students it is the stuff of nightmares. If anyone can gather the news then what is the journalists role.

Even though citizen journalism is still in its infancy, it is becoming more and more clear that citizen journalism cannot complete a full scale takeover of the status quo. Trained journalists will be required to process the information gathered and verify, insofar as is possible, the information supplied.

Mark Little spoke some weeks ago in DCU about enabling citizen journalism with reporter packs consisting of basic video recording equipment, a laptop, dongle and some other bits and pieces. He is at the very heart of using social media as a platform for citizen journalism. He spoke of using qualified journalists as gatekeepers, deciding what does and does not get published.

I think that there are two extremes in this arguement and the fundamentalism of either one feeds off the other's. It is very easy to speak in superlatives, but more difficult to rationally assess what the situation is what's likely to happen.

It is my opinion that the transition to journalism fully incorporating citizen journalism will not be as painful as people predict. Furthermore, I think it is incomprehensible that any new publishing platform will wholesale replace its predecessor. It has not yet happened in the history of the media.