The launch date of The Speros Project is being pushed back a week to April 11th.

It isn’t because of technical problems or lack of content.

It’s a marketing decision. It gives the bosses a bit of extra time to do the necessary PR. That’s reasonable. If you build it they will come. If you build it, and let people know it’s coming, more will come. Promotion is important.:^)

I’ve been thinking about the term citizen journalist because that is what The Speros Project is. I’ve been skeptical of the term - because I’m a citizen who happens to have received the paychecks for journalism, and I don’t hold the profession in awe or high esteem. I was a consumer of information before I got paid to disseminate it, while I got paid to disseminate and I remain a consumer.
Having read thousands of blogs and having used the internet to get most of the news I want, I think the either/or debate about main stream media is largely about adjusting to new technology and new ways people consume.

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine suggests we are looking at the discussion of journalism the wrong way.
As he says it’s a verb, not a noun.

Cut the act of journalism into its component pieces:

Witnessing: Seeing news happen is usually the beginning of the act of journalism. Used to be, witnessing news didn’t matter, it wasn’t heard, unless the witness was a reporter or was interviewed by one. Now, thanks to technology and connectivity, any witness can share the news. Within minutes of yesterday’s Indonesian earthquake, I went online and found eyewitness accounts that beat any news organization by hours, even days. As we learned in the tsunami, photos and video will also come from witnesses.

Asking: Seeking information you don’t have and want to know is also known as reporting. This was supposed to be the domain of the pros but more and more we see just people with sufficient knowledge or curiosity reporting.

Editing: Everyone edits. We select, we correct, we package, we present in the media we choose. (Some call this censorship but it’s not, of course; it’s just editing.)

Commenting: Giving news perspective is also part of journalism and everyone does that, too: We say what we think about a story or we criticize a movie. It’s the journalism absolutely anyone can do.

Distributing: Until a decade ago, this was where journalism was held hostage: If you didn’t own the press or the broadcast tower, you couldn’t do journalism; it wasn’t real, official, trusted (said those who owned those assets). It wasn’t heard. But now, of course, even a guy in Afghanistan can broadcast to the world.

When you slice journalism into its atomic elements, and generously define the acquisition, distribution, and consumption of information as acts of journalism, it’s apparent that, as Dave Winer says, either everyone is a journalist or no one is.

Now this analysis leaves out a few critical functions of the journalistic process up until now: Today, the journalistic organization invests in acquiring information, aggregates, selects, edits, vets, presents, and distributes. Can these functions be performed outside the journalistic organization? Yes. Do they have to be? No. Should they be? Well, you’ll decide that.