Editorial gatekeeping in citizen journalism

Abstract

Editorial staff play an essential role as gatekeepers within professional journalism. Citizen journalism has the potential to depart from routine journalistic practices and allow for more democratic posting of unmoderated content. Nonetheless, many citizen journalism web sites do have an editorial staff and no existing research has explored the contributions of editors to citizen journalism web sites. I theorize that the editorial staff on citizen journalism sites serve as legitimating organizational structures within the larger organizational field and, as citizen gatekeepers, who enforce journalistic routines. Using a content analysis of a sample (n = 326) drawn from the largest sampling frame of English-language citizen journalism web sites based in the United States to date (n = 1958), I examine the characteristics of citizen journalism web sites with an editorial model as well as how the presence of an editorial staff is associated with the practice of journalistic routines common in professional journalism.