By Bro. Herbert P. Mapiles
Modern technology has brought new taste of reporting whether for print or broadcast media. The conventional way of data gathering now faces major changes. The way reporters gathered and disseminated news is also changing. Internet starts information revolution!
In my case as sill new in the profession, assigned to cover the 4th district of Pampanga involving eight towns including Apalit, Candaba, Macabebe, Masantol, Minalin, San Luis, San Simon andSanto Tomas, I find it hard to travel on a daily basis on theses places to get information for my news stories, except of course when the situation obliges me to do so.
To complement this limitation, I decided to mobilize some of my friends, who like me are also members of an amateur radio group in Pampanga to feed me information about the various events and activities in their respective places.
I find it effective and useful during recent calamities wherein I managed to gather information up to small details of the flooded barangays in the coastal towns of the province.
With the advent of social media, I am now in the process of developing a website – to allow ordinary citizens to participate in news gathering by allowing them to air their grievances, opinions, and views. In effect, we are making media available for citizen journalism.
The accessibility of the Internet - with blogs, podcasts, streaming video and other web-related innovations - is what has made citizen journalism possible.
Citizen journalism will lead to better involvement of the residents in governance by knowing and demanding their rights especially when the denied by public officials.