It has a nice ring to it, citizen journalism, and it's quite the hot topic in the newspaper business these days. After talking down to readers for so long, American newspapers are out to win back readers.

And now they're even recruiting them to cover the news for them as reporters. That's ordinary folks going out on stories in place of seasoned journalists.

For sure, many media people are warming to the notion of citizen journalism, if with reservations, and one is Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Things are so bad in the newspaper business today that I am inclined to root for all sorts of radical experiments that I would have opposed before," says Meyer. "The industry has been too cautious in the past and needs to increase its rate of risk-taking. Citizen journalism might not work out, but it is worth trying."

Newspapers around the country are doing just that. Among them is the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett Co. It's already using reader-created journalism at some of its 90 newspapers, including the Fort Myers News-Press.

That paper claims some successes, too. Undertaking a story investigating the high cost of a local sewer expansion program, it called on its readers to help on the leg work. Within just half a day nearly 70 volunteered. One reader led the paper to a damning city-commissioned audit of contractors. That in turn provided data that led to one local official's resignation and a slashing of utility bills for taxpayers.

Some papers are hosting Saturday morning workshops to teach readers how to be reporters, a sort of journalistic boot camp.

But there's another aspect of citizen journalism that's less talked about. It's a less-glamorous aspect, one that speaks to a less noble end of citizen journalism: money.

Driving much of the push advancing citizen journalism is the aim of publishers to replace the legions of reporters who are losing their jobs through downsizing with volunteers who will cover stories for the thrill of it, at no cost.

It's a huge gamble for newspaper publishers, and one with the word disaster written across it in very large letters.

What's perhaps most troubling about citizen journalism is that it's coming about just as newspapers across America are reemphasizing local coverage over the national and international news that had been in vogue for the past several decades. They are doing so to shore up eroding readership bases.

Beefing up local coverage should mean increased costs, since it means putting more reporters on the street. Publishers are instead hoping to avoid those costs by using free citizen reporters. Therein lays the nightmare in waiting.
 
The problem, as critics are quick to note, is that among all the average Joes and Janes who are recruited as reporters, few will likely be blessed with the sort of objectivity readers demand in their coverage. As it is, newspaper struggle with maintaining objectivity with their paid staff.

Because they're coming from the local community, these citizen reporters can bring with them alliances with local political factions, and they'll certainly have embedded views about the mayor and council and the most recent bond issue.

So while the paper may save on reporter salaries, it will have to have that many more editors to vet the stories and rewrite them for publication. That’s going to add substantial costs to their local reporting budgets. And even then they'll have to work that much harder to keep mistakes out of the paper.

As papers increase local coverage, they'll simply have that many more people out reporting--and that many more potential mistakes.

In fact, citizen journalism is not new. Back in the 90s, when it was the nation's largest newspaper chain, Thomson Newspapers tried it and found it totally unworkable.

If citizen journalism didn’t work for Thomson, what makes Gannett think it’s going to work now, asks Dr. Frank Fee Jr., associate professor and director of UNC’s master’s program School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

"It goes back to the days of country correspondents or stringers. They are limited in what they can do, and newspapers have never been very good about training those people," says Fee, who has 35 years of daily newspaper experience.

Fee sees myriad problems. "There are all sorts of disruptions, including the fact that it’s going to be that much more difficult to find a citizen journalist if you have a question on deadline."

But what Fee sees as the big issue is one of credibility, and the need of papers to protect their credibility.

"I have seen some horrendous mistakes made by people who don’t know what they are doing," he says. "There is every opportunity for lots of things to fall through the cracks. I would be interested in seeing where we are with this in six months."