Amanda Michel has written a great piece for Columbia Journalism Review [I am a CJR devotee!] about her experience as the Director of Off The Bus, a pro am (also known as citizen journalism) site that was launched and housed at Huffington Post. Off The Bus was a pretty interesting case study of the triumphs and tribulations of getting a successful citizen journalism effort across the ground. Michel has a pretty honest and reflective piece on what worked, what needed to be improved, and lessons learned for other media outlets. I pulled some excerpts that I think are particularly pertinent for progressive media folks to start thinking about citizen journalism. Those are right after my quick arguments about WHY progressive media needs to start thinking about pro am/citizen journalism.

I personally believe that progressive media outlets need to strategically integrate pro am journalism efforts into their reporting. Why? Because, it:
a) Provides an opportunity to harness the smarts and passion of a wide ranging group of people who want to be involved and committed to your organization. (Community Building!)
b) Supplies your users/audience reporting and information they wouldn’t normally access or you can’t get on your own based on location, the amount of people that have to be on the ground, etc… The key is to figure what your niche is. What’s the added value that this provides? It has to be directed and focused. Is it around a particular subject or issue for a certain period of time? Is it working with a cadre of citizen journalists who help you pull pieces of one big story together?
c) Saves the pocketbook. Let’s get down to reality here: there are some opportunities to save quite a bit of money depending on your budget and news orientation. That doesn’t hurt. At all.
d) Integrates your organization into the future of journalism now, or as Jessica and I call it, “21st Century Muckraking” in our forthcoming book. (Out in the Fall!)

There are opportunities for media outlets to start their own programs, but it might make much more sense to partner with organizations who already have some programs in play (Like the amazing citizen news organization, The Uptake) or with organizations who are interested in pursuing/reporting on similar issues with you through this strategy.

Michel wrote about the baseline of citizen journalism:

Our experience with OffTheBus demonstrates that what Clay Shirky calls the “mass amateurization” of journalism can provide real breakthroughs—not only in the democratization of news and information but also in bolstering the role of the media as a pillar of democracy. What we did won’t replace what traditional newsrooms do, but if taken seriously and used properly, this pro-am model has the potential to radically extend the reach and effectiveness of professional journalism. And it won’t break the bank. More than five million people read OTB’s coverage in October 2008, and our tab for sixteen months of nationwide collaborative journalism was just $250,000.

She added tips about best strategies for working with citizen journalists and how to know when there was success

Our best assignment e-mails drew participants by posing questions to members: How is the convention impacting Denver? Will Reagan Democrats vote Obama or McCain? Much as the Obama campaign successfully tapped into a yearning for engagement, OffTheBus spoke to thousands of citizens who wanted to help gather and report the news, not just consume it. There was a palpable joy among participants who transcended the role of spectator and created new narratives beyond those they were seeing in their daily newspapers day after day.

But it wasn’t just fun. Metrics were essential to make sure work got done. I tracked people’s participation, and noted when they dropped out of a project. We knew which of our writers got published more frequently. The number of people who opened our e-mails and then took action told me our conversion rates. Our membership was approximately 60 percent Democrat. Women were the majority; their participation on reporting projects never fell below 50 percent. After Bittergate, retired journalists joined OTB in droves.

A nod to why citizen journalism is going to be crucial for journalism’s future.

Now that this tradition has begun to blossom in yet one more venue, the sphere of public information, journalism should take heed and pick up where campaigns and nonprofits have left off. The pro-am model is part of this equation. What OTB did was just a start, but we proved that it is viable and desirable. Implementation and refinement of our methods also will deepen relationships with viewers and readers—the public. A stronger rapport with the public won’t solve journalism’s crisis by itself, but it could be a central component of the solution.

And last but not least…

The integration of strands of the pro-am strategy into the journalism mainstream will be bumpy. It will require, among other things, a shift in journalism’s traditional ethical matrix. Transparency and disclosure, rather than neutrality—often tainted if not patently false—must become critical fourth-estate virtues. The pros must commit to figuring out how to harness, cooperate with, and assimilate citizen journalists into the future of their craft. In other words, more professional journalists should take their offline skills—such as interviewing sources—online, and learn to build and manage networks of sources to produce accurate information.

Michel’s going to get a chance to prove her argument, as she’s just been hired to be Pro Publica’s Editor of Distributed Reporting.