Neil Hodgson

Neil Hodgson is a writer with the Liverpool Daily Post and ECHO and LDP Business magazine business team. He also has extensive experience covering news, sport and features for the titles and previously reported on business for the Manchester Evening News before returning to Liverpool

Hi Kay,

Sorry for the delay in replying to youremail, but things have been very hectic recently.

I hope I'm not too late in responding.

Not sure whether it's of any use, butmy thoughts on citizen journalism is that it can only get bigger in termsof people contributing to established and new media via pictures and filmsof 'on the spot' incidents.

Obviously, it can benefit companiessuch as ourselves due to the first hand eye witness element that can beused for pictures, or screen grabs, or uploaded on to our site.

Reports and comments from such incidentsare also invaluable and are probably a godsend to sub editors/news editorsup against tight deadlines and desperate for exclusive or first hand observations,which, of course, they can receive with fantastic ease over different media.

However, I'm not sure that citizen journalismin terms of blogs has developed quite so ferociously. Probably Twitterhas replaced these and, in most cases, is better because it restricts contributorsto a few score words instead of a long rambling discourse on somethingthat is usually of little interest to many readers.

These are the ideal 'soundbytes' thatare easily manageable and digested, as opposed to 'dull but worthy' diatribesthat tended to populate the blogosphere.

And I also think there's something inthe notion that readers, or consumers of mass media, still do value thework or the opinion of 'professional' writers and journalists - obviouslydepending on the quality of publication!

Cheers

Neil