Everything that Angelica Berezin used to know about the Holocaust came from history books and films. Then two years ago she met 75-year-old Holocaust survivor Pola Green. "Written records taught me what the Holocaust was," says Berezin, a junior liberal arts student and program assistant in the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies. "But it was Pola who taught me what it was like live it." - "In Their Own Words", (University of) Miami Magazine, Winter 2006

I sat next to Marcus Chan on one side and Dan Gillmor on the other at the recent (and one of my favorite confences) NewCommForum. Marcus told me that his employer, the San Francisco Chronicle, would be doing ten days coverage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake around the April 18th, 2006 centennial.

That's when I realized there would be not a single living person to interview about it.

Just yellowed news clippings and archival photos.

What would people know of the tsunami in 2104?

Just numbers of dead and videos from third-floor resort balconies? Maybe what little I've written so far is one more window into what was it like as a survivor. Perhaps each citizen journalist is a little window into what it's like to work, eat, play, live and witness each day?

I do not think of my blog as a "personal diary." I think of what I do as raw unpolished literary journalism, or "journalism lived":

"For me, what I have to say is validated by the fact that I was there, that I witnessed the event. There is, I admit, a certain egoism in what I write, always complaining about the heat or the hunger or the pain I feel, but it is terribly important to have what I write authenticated by its being lived." - Deborah Campbell, "Can Journalism Be Art?" (via Canadian Journalist)

I never quite got over the shock of being asked by the BBC about my little ol' diary (ok, not their exact words but it was condescending and referred to my blog as a 'diary') in a radio interview the day after the tsunami one-year memorial. I thought we'd moved beyond that by now. Guess not. This sounds like a panel I'm glad I gave a miss:

"What is the value in sharing experiences?" Keen asked at one point, with a touch of disdain in his voice -- as if he wanted to say to the entire universe of millions of bloggers, "I grow weary of your scribblings." My jaw dropped. Isn't "sharing experiences" the root of literature, the heart of conversation, a primal impulse of our humanity? Who would sneer at it? - "Blogs: Threat or Menace? , Scott Rosenberg

p.s. The only interesting citizen journalism panels I've participated in are the ones where "Is this really journalism?" doesn't even come up - usually because the panelists aren't journalists by profession. And thus we can actually dig into the meat of the matter.

I'm contributing here at Corante to share what I learned about citizen journalism that I didn't know before I returned to Thailand and Sri Lanka for the tsunami anniversary. And what I'm still exploring. I'd love feedback from citj-friendly journalism pros. Although I've been back for nearly a month now, there is a lot I've yet to share in writing anywhere.

p.p.s. To get a sense of my take on the journalism elitism, here's my riff on (up-for-sale) San Jose Mercury columnist Mike Langberg's, "An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening".