CitJ: Lessons Learned

It sounds like Dan Gillmor is giving up on Bayosphere, a citizen-journalism site in San Francisco. He's not giving up on what he calls "a more democratized media" but he lists some interesting lessons learned. Paraphrasing:

- The more people are required to clearly identify themselves and stand behind what they write, the better their contributions will be.
- Citizen journalists require active interaction and support. One of my basic questions about this whole area has been how we can expect good work from unsupervised amateurs when we work very hard to develop and guide our professional journalists.
- Good work requires some form of compensation.

It's not clear what happens next; he's looking for other people to take over Bayosphere so it will most likely continue. Meanwhile, he says he'll be concentrating on The Center for Citizen Media.