Citizen Journalism - Massaro Update

I must admit that spending two days in Bloomsbury talking to residents and writing about Monica Massaro's murder made me obsessed with this unsolved murder. I spent a lot of time searching the Internet and even set up Google Alerts on the topic.

And although there has yet to be anything released officially from the State Police, it looks like they have a suspect - a truck driver from North Carolina who was caught during a home invasion in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

The mayor of Bloomsbury is announcing it on the town's website (although some of the details originally posted have been removed), and it has been reported in the news in both The Chelmsford Independent. and in the Star Ledger. The Democrat is planning a major update this week as well. I've passed along some of the information I received through this blog from an anonymous commenter. He or she was obsessed with the case as well and found an amazing amount of information through the Internet and a friend who lives in the town.

So I guess in a sense we are both citizen journalists. We are interested and informed about a specific topic, and through posting on this blog and e-mailing the paper, we are adding to the articles (and type of articles) that will appear in the paper. Of course, I could take this a step further and go to Bloomsbury, talk to people and post an original article here or on another online space, this would be closer to what generally considered citizen (or grassroots) journalism, but I've begun my transition to the classroom, so I'll let the professionals handle this.

I do think this situation illustrates the variety of roles citizens can play in the gathering of news, and it will be another lesson from my internship that I will bring to my students.

Apparently the lessons just keep on coming!