While at the National Conference for Media Reform in Tennessee, NewAssignment.Net contributor Tanya Paperny caught up with Joan McCarter, better known as “McJoan” at the Daily Kos where she is a contributing editor and blogger. Joan was attending the conference as a speaker (MP3 of her panel on social networking) but took the time to answer questions about how citizen journalism is continuing to mature.

Tanya: One of the common critiques of Internet media and citizen journalism is that readers and viewers go to sources that they are comfortable with. How can online communities, bloggers, and citizen journalists build trust and name recognition, especially if some use pseudonyms?

Joan “McJoan” McCarter: Right now, we’re the new kids on the block. Because we do forcefully take on the traditional media when we see them falling down, they’re not in love with us. A lot of the hits you see on us are because we’re taking them on directly. As far as the anonymity issues goes, I don’t know why necessarily knowing someone’s name behind the thoughts makes so much of a difference. I can’t help but think back to the founding fathers and all of those pamphlets they produced while we were still under English reign. They wrote under pseudonyms to protect their privacy, to protect their anonymity, to protect their lives. Were the thoughts that they were presenting any less revolutionary, any less important, any less critical to the founding of our country because they were produced under pseudonyms? I don’t think so.

T: Can you think of some examples of the maturity of the blogosphere or any examples of people or projects that have gained trust, name recognition and acknowledgment of their skill?

J: I see it less in terms of traditional media recognition than in actual achievements. And those achievements are doing things like really changing the face of the 2006 election, of helping push Iraq as the primary issue. Whether that will gain us more acceptance as a journalistic source, I don’t know. But it will sure give us more recognition as a force in American politics.

T: Is it going to take the traditional media tools and techniques being utilized by citizen journalists and bloggers or is it creating a completely different channel that doesn’t necessarily seek that sort of recognition?

J: I think it’ll take creating parallel channels. I don’t know that we’ll ever necessarily get the complete buy-in of the traditional media and I don’t think that we necessarily need to. I think what we function best as is a check on the traditional media.

T: Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia Journalism school, wrote an article in the New Yorker in which he raised suspicions about blogs and citizen journalism as “journalist-free journalism” and said that “reporting requires reporters.” How is this notion changing and bloggers potentially garnering more trust and respect as more people like you refer to blogging as their profession?

J: I think you’re going to see a bifurcation of what blogs are doing. You’re going to see what I do – and I don’t do a lot of original investigative journalism – which is commentary on the pundits of the world and commentary on the commentary, in many cases. I think you’re also going to see a rise in blogs doing original reporting, doing investigative journalism. There’s some funding out there for blogs now. There’s one called Colorado Confidential that is doing just that. I think more is going to be invested in that side of blogging.

Tanya Paperny is a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She volunteers as a reporter for KCSB-FM and has interned at WAMU-FM in Washington, DC.