By NYU Staff

Think of it as a town hall for the Web. Readers and community members – not paid editorial staff – pitch, write, fact-check, and even edit published articles. Editors merely curate content and all topics big or small are fair game.

Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve browsed one of the spate of citizen journalism sites that have recently flooded the Internet. Sites like AllVoices, NowPublic, and GroundReport are some that may come to mind. Few rely entirely on user-submitted content, a sign of reluctance to completely embrace the citizen journalism model.

Dino Corvino

But CitizenWausau has. Founded in October 2007 by Dino Corvino, who works at a local family planning center, and Andy Laub, a Web designer, it only publishes articles written by registered users of the site. With a limited overhead, the site is chugging along on the uncompensated sweat of the founders and two volunteer staff members. As Corvino explains, it was started as a way for residents of central Wisconsin to read, write, and discuss local news. Although they’ve discussed monetizing the site, it continues to be ad-free and doesn’t charge for content.  With no source of funding, “it’s kind of a good-faith sort of thing for now,” says Corvino.

The site serves as an outpost for blogs – a centralized space for users to launch and maintain blogs about Wausau and surrounding areas. With about half a thousand registered users, around 20 percent contribute most of the site’s material.

But don’t think of Citizen Wausau as a free-for-all.  There is some censorship at work. The front page operates more like a newspaper, where Corvino edits and greenlights head stories.  Laub controls its design. Spam, advertisements, and adult-content are prohibited. Preference is given to stories that address issues in central Wisconsin.  As active members of the site, the pair serve as an example, encouraging people to write by doing.

Still, some media experts worry that standards will fall short. Anna Tauzin, Web editor of J-Lab, a journalism institute at the American University, says she’s mostly concerned about the credibility of the site. Beyond that, the question becomes whether the model – relying on unpaid writers to produce 100 percent of your content – is sustainable. “Well yeah, people love to gossip. But I don’t think you can call it news. That implies it’s been fact-checked.”

But some news sites that promote citizen journalism have created journalistic standards that all citizen writers must adhere to. And it’s not just for yokel blogs. The Huffington Post recently published a list of what it calls its citizen journalism publishing standards.  Included in the list: avoiding heresay, sticking to the facts, and identifying sources.  Some might call it J-School 101.