NewsParticipation is an online community where citizen journalism is recognized and fostered

Nov. 12, 2011 - PRLog -- Randolph, MA -- It is increasingly common for individual, first-hand accounts of breaking news to be shared online. However, these critical posts and conversations remain scattered across the web. NewsParticipation offers a single site where such works can be published, and where people can access information to educate themselves and each other on a broad range of contemporary issues.

The need for citizen journalism has become increasingly urgent. Mainstream media is often too closely tied to special interests to give fair and complete coverage to the important events of our time. Without unbiased information, the body politic remains under-educated, and unable to participate in a productive public discourse. This dearth of participation is contributing to a persistent ignorance about current events, and resulting in the deterioration of our representation in government.

It is our hope that this forum will foster citizen engagement, and build a collective knowledge – free of mainstream news biases - that will ultimately enable people to directly influence government action.

We believe that when citizen journalists can come together, a common voice will emerge – one that will be difficult to ignore. NewsParticipation aims to be the united voice with which individuals can speak and, together, be heard loud and clear.

The media these days is controlled by special interests and the news it brings to the people are about 90% doctored and prepared to represent or protect the interests of these special interests. These special interests could be businesses, politicians, religions etc and when the news we get are doctored to represent these interests, the citizens are left confused and uneducated about what goes on.

Before now, the citizens have no means of telling their own stories even when they know that the stories they get in the media are false. They are forced to discuss in frustration among the small groups they can form which cannot make any difference. This situation makes misinformation of the populace possible because when the only information the people get is wrong information, at some point they'll start to believe it.

Newsparticipation.com is about fostering citizen journalism. Basically, it is a website where anybody and everybody can go and tell their stories. This makes it unique in the sense that the news will be coming from the proverbial horses' mouths and not from some second hand source where it could be tainted by ideologies and politics like the mainstream media.

Newsparticipation gives the citizens the opportunity to reclaim the discourse from the politically and ideologically motivated media that control it at the moment. Every citizen with a video or still camera can easily tell their story to either contradict, complement or corroborate the mainstream media stories. This could be as simple as aiming a video camera at yourself while you speak about how a particular policy by your national, state or local government affects you, or as involved as making a full length documentary about the same issue.

Another quality of this website is that it will take journalistic coverage to places where it would not be possible for mainstream media to cover due to lack of resources and, or special interest expediency. This will ensure that no story is left untold as citizens now have the wherewithal to bring these stories to the world.

Some people ask if this is not just duplicating the works of sites like YouTube and Vimeo but the answer is no. It is not because those sites provide a jumble of all sorts of videos, both from professional film makers and otherwise, with all sorts of messages from entertainment to sports, to the frivolous. NewsParticipation, on the other hand, is strictly news and information videos from everyday people who just want to be heard in the scheme of things and simply voice their thoughts on video and upload.

Newsparticipation provides the right platform where people can confidently tell their stories knowing that it will not be swallowed up and hidden by the distractions that take up much of sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

Contact:
Boodie Ugwumba
NewsParticipation.com
Randolph, MA
+1 857-247-6505
ifeanyiugwumba@yahoo.com
http://www.newsparticipation.com