3rd of 4 Part Series of Citizen Journalists: Clearly, Main Stream Media Has Failed Us. Can “Citizen Journalists” fill the breach? VoicesUp2012 and United Republic Think So. Interview with Andre Sternberg

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What better place than at the Republican and Democrat conventions to prove out the need for and the superiority of a “citizen journalist” over the hack reporting the American public gets?

Andre Sternberg, associate producer at Link TV and Evelyn Messinger, President at InterAct – also interviewed here – were tasked with selecting two young representatives from among a score of qualified candidates.  (No offense to people of “my” age – but a more contemporary demographic was needed here as you will learn.)

The two citizen journalists selected, Jessica Eise and Solomon Kleinsmith (interviewed elsewhere here on WGRN) are to report on the two conventions through the lens of the “citizen journalist” and demographic of people who – up to this point – have not had their generation’s issues addressed.  This, the “lost generation” of people who are fed up with the existing political process which is bought-and-paid-for by Lobbyists and Big Money, wants hard questions to be asked – and answered.

Jessica and Solomon are to attend the RNC and DNC national conventions to satisfy that need.  Not only were these two fully funded, but will attend with with press passes and instructions to get the best stories possible.  They were selected by LinkTV and United Republic (links below) to culminate an ambitious project launched two years ago called “Digital Citizen.”

Exactly how were these two were selected?  In this interview, Andre discusses the criteria used, the process and the underlying philosophy of the organizations that made this trip possible.

Enjoy the interview.

More info on this special project can be found at www.LinkTV.or/voicesup, at www.unitedrepublic.org and www.citizenschannel.org.  For a special treat to view another special project of civic activism, go to Evelyn’s “Digital Citizen” at http://bit.ly/TXCu2E.