If you look in the dictionary for the definition of 'citizen journalism', you should see a picture of Dan Gillmore. Gillmore wrote the first blog at a newspaper website. He also wrote the book 'We the Media' on the subject of grassroots media and now he runs the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkely and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The Idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.
Although these acts don't go beyond simple observation at the scene of an important event, they might be considered acts of journalism. The average citizen can now make news and distribute it globally, thanks to the wide spreading of so many tools for capturing live events. An act that was once reserved for established journalists and media companies.
According to Jay Rosen, citizen journalists are "the people formerly known as the audience," who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from
one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."[source]
