Citizen Journalism Quotes

We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire. ~ Zeynep Tufekci

A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking. ~ Craig Newmark

I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery. ~ Morley Safer

Camera-Phones are at the root of the Citizen-Journalism revolution. ~ Philippe Kahn

With technology and social media and citizen journalism, every rock that used to go unturned is now being flipped, lit and put on TV. ~ LZ Granderson

The development of social media, citizen journalism, and new technology has made it more difficult for the established media to simply ignore gun deaths in certain areas. ~ Gary Younge

How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future - after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen - we cannot, must not, and will not turn. We will finish our job. How could we do less? We're Americans. ~ Ronald Reagan

The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master ... One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others ... To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by government
not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

America has joined forces with the Allied Powers, and what we have of blood and treasure are yours. Therefore it is that with loving pride we drape the colors in tribute of respect to this citizen of your great republic. And here and now, in the presence of the illustrious dead, we pledge our hearts and our honor in carrying this war to a successful issue. Lafayette, we are here. ~ Charles E. Stanton

In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Sure enough, as merger has followed merger, journalism has been driven further down the hierarchy of values in the huge conglomerates that dominate what we see, read and hear. And to feed the profit margins journalism has been directed to other priorities than "the news we need to know to keep our freedoms" ~ Bill Moyers

Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, 'the United States of America.'

But it is hardly strange.

Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.

We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen.

Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.

I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of ~ Thomas A. Edison

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. ~ Barack Obama

There is a kind of dictatorship that can come about through a creeping paralysis of thought, readiness to accept paternalistic measures by government, and along with those measures comes a surrender of our own responsibilities and therefore a surrender of our own thought over our own lives and our own right to exercise the vote. The free system gives the right to every citizen to do something for himself. Because he has the right, the opportunity is always there. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Immune to the blandishments of religions, countries, families, and whatever else that - with a smattering of emotive images and strains of maudlin music - can move the average citizen to tears or violence, the pessimist is invisible in both history books and the media. Without belief in gods or ghosts, unmotivated by a comprehensive delusion, he could never plant a bomb, plan a revolution, or shed blood for a cause. Pessimists are indeed lackadaisical as partisans in the human drama. ~ Thomas Ligotti

I shall not remind you, Citizen-Directors, of all I have done for the triumph of liberty, the prosperity of St. Domingo, the glory of the French Republic; nor will I protest to you my attachment to our mother country, to my duties; my respect to the constitution, to the laws of the Republic, and my submission to the government. ~ Toussaint Louverture

The average citizen expresses pride in the American Bill of Rights and then seeks to protect his real estate by restrictive covenants. ~ Harry Allen Overstreet

There is no democracy without journalism. ~ Scott Pelley

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Being an outsider means not being heard, not having a voice. It means being treated as a second-class citizen, being diminished in the eyes of others. We have all felt this way at one time or another, but some feel it more consistently. Unfortunately, our schools often do not embrace the talents of many of their occupants. ~ Chris Crutcher

I can't recall a story that played out exactly as I'd expected it to. That's one of the thrills of journalism - being surprised, and learning new stuff, but it also poses the biggest challenge to a writer's character. ~ Dave Barry

The natural man lives for himself; he is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself and on his like. The citizen is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on its denominator; his value depends upon the whole, that is, on the community. Good social institutions are those best fitted to make a man unnatural, to exchange his independence for dependence, to merge the unit in the group, so that he no longer regards himself as one, but as a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy. ~ Peter Singer

If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen - thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good. ~ Aristotle.

Las Vegas, the most expensive toilet in the world that still can't flush. ~ Brin-Jonathan Butler

Journalism students need to understand it and need a solid background in the liberal arts, in sociology, economics, literature and language, because they won't get it later on. ~ Harrison Salisbury

Power, after all, is not just military strength. It is the social power that comes from democracy, the cultural power that comes from freedom of expression and research, the personal power that entitles every Arab citizen to feel that he or she is in fact a citizen, and not just a sheep in some great shepherd's flock. ~ Edward Said

Stories are meant to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. ~ Finley Peter Dunne

The citizen ... preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and manhood. ~ Charles Dickens

Once a citizen receives a direct payment from the state, the state has purchased their complicity ~ Charles Hugh Smith

We have to be the best global citizens we can be. ~ Thomas Friedman

I have written millions of words about contemporary England - in journalism. Why don't I take it as the background for a novel? I may do one day. But the simple answer is that it does not excite the novelistic part of my brain; it does not fire it up. ~ Sebastian Faulks

Journalism is less addictive than communism. ~ Dan Rather

The 'person' is not an interchangeable part. The 'citizen' is ... The person is harking back to a pre-print model. It's what the hippies were. ~ Terence McKenna

It is very difficult to be a non-religious Jew outside Israel. The synagogue keeps Jews together in the Diaspora. In Israel, you are a Jew from morning to night. We don't even have to think about it, just as a Dutch citizen doesn't spend his whole day thinking about the fact that he is a Dutch citizen. It's a given. ~ Tommy Lapid

And then...it wasn't just that we lost all those jobs, it was that people didn't have anything to be good at anymore. There's only so good you can be about pushing a mop or emptying a bedpan. We're trending backwards as a nation, probably for the first time in history, and it's not the kids with the green hair and bones through their noses. Personally I don't care for it, but those things are inevitable. The real problem is the average citizen does not have a job he can be good at. You lose that, you lose the country. ~ Philipp Meyer

When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth. ~ Seno Gumira Ajidarma

I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence. ~ Kingsley Amis

Achieving the right balance is all part of programming a news magazine. ~ Jonathan Kern

Newspapers, of course, need both news and fanfare. A blending of gossip and truth. ~ Paul Tobin

Albert Camus did not know he was summing up modern photojournalism when he wrote:Will I kill myself or have a cup of coffee ~ Sacha Hartgers

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

And her. What would she do without him?

She's not special, not like BB and Ghostly, who awe her with their intelligence and the things they're capable of, all their humbling potential. All she does is write - a lot - because it's fun. She's under no illusions, she's popular through quantity not quality, she's not bad but she is not Blackbindings and she never will be. She writes because it's fun. And she thinks about him, and what he does.

She works three jobs she hates, just to keep the bills paid. She wanted to get into journalism but she can't afford the internships. She already sees what her life will be like, she sees the path ahead, she knows there's no way off; she'll never not be working three dead end jobs she hates, she'll marry her boyfriend and unless there's an accident they'll decide almost too late that fuck it they'd better have those kids now or never, because they never will be able to afford them; she'll never do anything amazing, never be anything amazing, just a person in a world full of people, getting by.

But there's him. And every time she faces life and thinks she can't bear it, there's him. If he can be so brave, can't she manage the littlest bravery? Because - because her little pointless life that will never mean anything, that will have vanished beyond notice within hardly more than a hundred years if she has those kids to remember her, her dragging, struggling life of bills and broken pipes and fuck it it's anothe ~ Rainjoy

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. ~ Augusto Boal

As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state - to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights. ~ Herbert Spencer

I thought journalism would enable me to be a mile wide and an inch deep. ~ Matt Ridley

Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. ~ Henry David Thoreau

You cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without grave consequences. We are approaching the end of the Anglo-American moment, and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world...Cecil Rhodes..said that to be born a British subject was to win first prize in the lottery of life. One the eve of the Great Ward, in his play "Heartbreak House", Bernard Shaw turned the thought around to taunt a ruling class too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming. "Do you think," he wrote, "the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?....In our time, to be born a citizen of the United States is to win first prize in the lottery of life, and, as the Britons did, too many Americans assume it will always be so. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of America because you were born in it? Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a post-Anglosphere world. ~ Mark Steyn

In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin ... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party. ~ Helder Camara

If you want to end a war, don't wait for the orders to come in - stand up and demand from the government to focus on peace and not on war, and if they ignore you, which they most likely would, then forget their intervention and go over to the other side yourself as a vulnerable and unarmed citizen of not a nation, but of peace. And when one side of the border has a handful of such citizens of peace, then the other side is bound to reciprocate that peace. ~ Abhijit Naskar

You and your ship will immediately familiarize yourselves with the guidelines for dealing with citizen civilians. And you will follow them. ~ Ann Leckie

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane". ~ Barbra Streisand

Money is the great power today. Men sell their souls for it. Women sell their bodies for it. Others worship it. The money power has grown so great that the issue of all issues is whether the corporation shall rule this country or the country shall again rule the corporations. ~ Joseph Pulitzer

As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not vindicated. Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur. ~ David Baldacci