Is Citizen journalism failing?

I’ve always been a champion of citizen journalism, but recently I realized that, when the chips are down — when it’s less than two weeks out from The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime — I always turn to the pros. For me, the best analysis of the election is being done by people who do it for a living.

Those are the thoughts of Josh Levy who highlights perhaps one of the inert problems of citizen journalism.

For Josh the distinction is the professionalism that marks out the true journalist from the amateur blogger who in the current US campaign

hasn’t had much impact on the narrative of the race.

Interestingly though the best citizen journalism comes from responses to blogs,he quotes Andrew Sullivan who said in a piece that

If I were to do an inventory of the material that appears on my blog, I’d estimate that a good third of it is reader-?generated, and a good third of my time is spent absorbing readers’ views, comments, and tips. Readers tell me of breaking stories, new perspectives, and counterarguments to prevailing assumptions.

It is though important to remember one of the reasons why it has taken off.Yes the main one may well be the ease of publication,but it has also filled a void that the professionals were unwilling or unable to fill.
Whether that void is in political writing is uncertain@

Back in 2005 Jemima Kiss wrote that

It is important to ask why citizen journalism is taking off. A recent example of a burning local issue in Brighton was a trial of communal wheelie bins; rich people didn't want them outside their posh houses taking up parking spaces - renters with small flats wanted communal bins so the seagulls couldn't throw rubbish all over the road.
There was extremely limited coverage about this in the Argus and little room for discussion - so someone started a dedicated web forum and, for the most part, an extremely positive, articulate debate followed - including contributions from the councillor in charge of the trial