What Went Wrong? is a citizen journalism project started in sub-Saharan Africa to document all the unsustainable aid projects started by Westerners who fail to follow through after their PR blitz. Journalist Peter DeCampo spoke with BRIGHT magazine about the project, where Africans can text reports on local fiascoes and boondoggles: Read the rest “Africa is littered with abandoned poorly-planned aid projects”
Rhoda Young turned in a series of high-energy live reports after being first journalist on the scene of a house fire in Norfolk, Virginia. It's got everything local news should have: vertical video, swearing, interfering with authorities. Read the rest “Citizen journalist enthusiastically reports local house fire”
Editor's Note: The International Documentary Association has released a petition that asks the Department of Justice to investigate the arrests of citizen journalists who videotape police killings of citizens in marginalized communities. Boing Boing asked documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras and David Felix Sutcliffe to share with our readers why the fight to protect the rights of these amateur documentarians matters so much for all of us.—Xeni Jardin
Citizen journalists are reporting from the frontline of police violence in the United States. Using camera phones, they recorded the final moments of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner. In each case, the police retaliated by arresting those citizens - either in the immediate aftermath of the killings, or within 24 hours of the deaths being ruled homicides by medical examiners. Read the rest “#RightToRecord: DOJ must investigate arrests of citizens who document police killings”
San Francisco recently doubled the number of walls it was coating with hydrophobic paint, which is supposed to deter wall-pissing by making the urine spray back all over the pee-er. Read the rest “Citizen journalists vs San Francisco's hydrophobic pee-reflecting paint”
Ramsey Orta was hounded, framed, beaten and jailed by cops who also beat his disabled mother -- and he's not the only citizen journalist who faced reprisals for recording the NYPD's public execution of Eric Garner. Read the rest “Citizen journo who videod Eric Garner's murder now hounded by NYPD”
Nydia Tisdale, a citizen journalist, was invited to a GOP rally in Atlanta, but State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens demanded that she (and not other, more friendly press) stop recording his speech; when she refused, he summoned a deputy who violently arrested her and then charged her with felony obstruction after she elbowed him while he was bending her over and pressing his groin into her buttocks. Read the rest “Invited citizen journalist at GOP rally violently arrested for recording speakers”
I missed this great read published a few months back by photojournalist Connor Boals in Columbia Journalism Review, but it's worth revisiting now: a story about the indigenous pirate radio stations that connect poor rural Mayan communities throughout Guatemala. Read the rest “In Guatemala, pirate Mayan radio connects marginalized indigenous communities”
