Today I personally realised the importance of ‘being on the spot’ and how current technologies have enabled ordinary citizens to capture events as they unfold, often before the mainstream media even catches wind of it.

My personal experience is a common case study that advocates of citizen journalism/participatory media/social media love to put forward as its biggest advantage i.e being at the right place at the right time with the right equipment. In my case I happened to be in town shopping for a new cellphone battery for my girlfriend when I noticed that the road outside the electronics shop had been cordoned off. On further investigation I found that a “Donkey Parade” was taking place as part of the government’s “Transport Month” initiative. I immediately phoned Vincent to tell him that we should get one of our students out to photograph the event which he promptly did. I knew this would take a while, even in a small town like Grahamstown, so I started snapping the first of 40 pictures on my multi-purpose Sony Ericsson W810i which has a 2-megapixel camera and decent video recording + editing functions.

Anyway, so I took the pictures, bought the battery and went straight to work. The pictures were uploaded onto my flickr account at about the same time that Gregor (with his snazzy digital SLR) arrived on the scene. You can find the pictures he took on his personal flickr account.

By this stage you must be wondering what the whole point of this story is and I’m getting to that right now.

Firstly, me being on the scene would’ve been somewhat irrelevant had I not been able to document it in some way. The beauty of camera cellphones is that there’s a strong likelihood that they will accompany you wherever you go. They are also small, light and generally have a good battery life. Most importantly, they’re capable of sending text/pictures/video directly to the Internet, which in this case wasn’t necessary because it wasn’t a do or die type of event. While the pictures that Gregor took were definitely of a better quality and standard, there were fewer of them and none of this would’ve mattered if he had missed the event.

For me, this epitomises the whole amateur vs. professional debate in journalism. There are plenty more amateurs (ie ordinary citizens) floating around when compared to professional journalists and therefore a stronger likelihood that they will be well situated as an event unfolds. This could be anything from a cat stuck in a tree to a terrorist attack. The amateur will probably have inferior equipment and produce a poorer product but will, all importantly, be on the scene first (if the professional ever arrives) and post the content quicker. This is the balance that needs to be struck and there’s no reason why the two can’t coexist perfectly together.

Saying that a citizen journalist will replace a professional journalist, in my mind, is like saying that John Blogs on Pascal Accounting can rid the world of CAs.

While the term ‘citizen journalism’ is personally not my favourite description and is debated to death, the idea that somebody besides a paid journalist can witness an event and report or comment on it using their own blog or a user-generated content site is a very real phenomenon which is gaining in popularity and I believe is here to stay.

Old media get with it and make it your friend!