WANT TO BECOME A 'CITIZEN JOURNALIST?

Do you want to be a Citizen Journalist? Do you want to cover events and news from your area or city? Please send email with your details, contact numbers, email and a sample news contribution to understand your writing potential. Email to hydnews@gmail.com to reach us and start reporting as a "Citizen Journalist" for India News Network (INN).

Based on your performance, you can be designated as your city/area's representative. You can contribute through photos, videos, podcasts, articles, news reports, interviews and event reports etc. 

Please note that this will be a volunteer activity and you will not be paid for your writings. However, you will be provided exposure and experience of working for INN platform with all credentials.

Please register with us by sending an email (HYDNEWS@GMAIL.COM) and join the team of citizen journalists.

Hey! Want to be a Journo?

Do you fancy the idea of becoming a citizen journalist? Would you prefer to skip the university education, the experience, the nine-to-five working hours – you know, the boring stuff – and cut straight to the chase?

It’s not impossible, but the short route is not for the faint-hearted.

At the very least, you should know how to recognise a story and be able to tell it as succinctly and accurately as possible – and remember, pictures are very good at telling stories. If your subject matter is unfamiliar, do your homework before committing words to your PC, tablet or smartphone and passing it on for public consumption. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to go the cut-and-paste route; there’s nothing quite as depressing as the discovery that a news provider has plagiarised another person’s work.

Citizen journalists (the term refers to non-professional journalists) have accomplished great things, especially since the advent of digital communications. Operating all over the world, with varying degrees of proficiency, they have focused public attention on grave miscarriages of justice, addressed important social issues and even helped to bring down oppressive governments. They have also produced mountains of entertainment. That’s the good part.

Unfortunately, a small minority have abused their chosen medium – which could be Twitter, Facebook or one of many other channels of communication – to rubbish their enemies, pursue private vendettas or harass perfectly innocent people.

Next step?
So, do you want to become a citizen journalist and embrace fame and fortune? If untold riches are your thing, don’t hold your breath. You’ll be competing in a tough arena and the potential earnings aren’t exactly extravagant. And the fame thing? That won’t be easy, either.

Start off small… select a news organisation and feed it a regular supply of relevant/entertaining/informative/newsworthy tip-offs (if it’s a really good one, call the newsdesk and try to work past the jaundiced groans).

Your next step – or possibly your first step, depending on time, talent, connectivity and resources – would be a blog on WordPress (or similar). Again, be aware that you’ll need to produce something very good and very different to stand out from the crowd, especially if you want the search engines to notice and rank you (SEO is another subject entirely).

Okay, off you go – and remember, “ambulance-chaser” is not just a rude term for lawyers. If you want to be a real citizen journalist, you need to move away from your computer and get out there, where the real people live, work, play, and occasionally get into trouble.