The most prominent Citizen Journalism website in the world has got to be The Huffington Post. Anyone who has never heard of The Huffington Post must be living in a cave in the past decade.

Arrianna Huffington was the founder of this internet newspaper and she incorporated the help of experts in various fields as well as anyone who wants to be part of this newspaper. She cleverly made used of normal people who wants to share what they’ve experienced or anything they think it’s news-worthy, write an article about it and post it on the website. If other people are interested, they will click on the article and read it, if not, it will be left untouched. This whole process is done voluntarily, meaning, if you feel like doing it, you’ll do it, and if you are feeling lazy or have nothing to share, then you can just browse the website and read other articles there. No one will point a gun at your head and force you to write anything if you don’t feel like it. Which also means that when you post something, you won’t get a cut in anything, you’re basically doing it out of free-will.

Anyone and everyone can be a part of it, the crucial aspect is the willingness of the individual. It also provides an excellent platform for aspiring journalist, they can practice their journalism skills on it and see if the stories they wrote are news-worthy and can create a buzz or not.

However, it didn’t take long before people got greedy and wanted a cut for the articles they supplied to The Huffington Post and that resulted in a multimillion dollars lawsuit. They are not wrong to ask for compensation for the work they have done and for the articles they have written, besides, if they don’t ask for money for the work they have done, the money is going to the higher authorities in the organization who might not have even written a single article or done much in that month.

Something to ponder upon regarding this issue is, will giving monetary rewards when publishing an article on the Internet newspaper make people want to publish more articles thus resulting in clutter? Take for example Singapore’s very own online citizen journalism site by The Straits Time, STOMP. For every article they write, the citizen journalist gets S$50. Look where that landed the site; it is filled with trivial articles and photos of teenage school children making out on MRT or under the HDB block. Those are not news-worthy information that I would want to know. Yes, they may be sensational but they are ultimately useless to everyone besides perhaps supplying a little entertainment that is short-lived.

Will taking money out of the equation be better for citizen journalism or is giving a small fee in return for the article be more advantageous for citizen journalism? Do share your thoughts on that here.

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