An Idea For Citizen Journalists-Convergence!

It's been a while since my last blog because of well...life. I'm back.

As you all know the word of the semester has been "convergence," and I want to keep the idea going but with a new twist. I was reading an article that was written back in January on GroundReport.com about how citizen journalism will evolve in 2008. One thing stood out to me in the article and that was the concept of getting all the smaller sites to band together in order to compete with the more respected sites for citizen journalism. It wasn't necessarily that exact idea that made me think, it was what my imagination interpreted instead that I found to be exciting and even more interesting.

How about besides citizens reporting the news, taking photos and maybe videos, they practice convergence with other media and work together in order to produce entire multi-media packages. I think this could be accomplished through a social network for the die-hard citizen journalists of our society. A Wired Journalists type of a place but for those who want to get published on the smaller sites that I heard can be more consistent and better than the older, more established sites.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think there is a place where all of these self-made journalists come together and discuss what story they want to cover, how they want to do it, who wants to be involved and what form of media they want to tell it through. I don't think there is a place for them all to exchange these ideas, pass their project along to allow others to edit or add to, and then finally, when all have agreed, post onto a site to share with the world.
It's just an idea and like I said if I am wrong then please enlighten me because I would love to see such a thing in action. Hey, I might want to join along. Do we really need to be under the umbrella of a major news organization to feel that our work has worth?

Here is a list of citizen journalism sites that are pretty cool. Comment and add more if I missed any cool ones.

Newsvine
NowPublic
Orato
Digital Journal
Ground Report
Broowha