Citizen Journalist is a course I developed in 2023 for the Lifelong Learning Program at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The course is aimed at the town’s large senior population, which comprises a very active group of people–active not only in maintaining their own selves, but also contributing significantly to the life and character of the town.

Citizen Journalists, in the way I understand it,  are people with ideas and opinions, some of whom are activists in the good sense of that term. They are people who read something, see something, hear something and want to tell others their feelings and opinions about it. The main requirement is that the shared something be newsworthy and that the audience to a large extent be strangers. So social media posts to your friends and family don’t count.

The most common way to get started as a citizen journalist is to react to some published piece of writing by leaving a comment — assuming the published piece allows for commenting.

As fledgling citizen journalists get increasing practice and get more fired up, they can go on to write longer pieces: letters to the editor, op-eds, and commentaries.

Since citizen journalists are not likely trained in professional journalism, they may make initially some iffy judgments about what to write about and how to compose contributions. This course is aimed at discussing our way to making more principled and effective contributions

 Two book recommendations:

The art of opinion writing by Suzette Martinez Standring 

Reading the comments by Joseph Reagle