The five main types of participatory journalism are sources, user feedback, user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and citizen journalism.

Sources are what make a story credible. Without sources, there is no way of telling whether a story is true or not.

user feedback is letting the audience be engaged in what type of story you are writing. This can include comments, hashtags, tags, etc.

User-generated content is when a normal citizen (not a journalist) posts feedback about a story. We see this a lot on social media from TikTok.

Crowdsourcing is when individuals act as a group to come together on one story. These people all have knowledge on one topic and come together to form a community.

Citizen journalism is when an ordinary citizen with no journalistic history creates their own stories for others to interact with.

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With President Donald Trump once again taking up the mantle of Commander in Chief, we have already seen a flurry of changes in his first few weeks in office. With funding freezes, higher costs, and steep interest rates, it is hard for small businesses to truly flourish. 

We are seeing this now take part in Rockford, Il. Rockford is a very blue collared city filled with many hard workers who own local small businesses. One of them being a favorite Italian market, Ditullio’s. Anthony Ditullio has been the owner of Ditullio’s for over two decades now. Serving the Rockford community with the finest of Italian sandwiches, along with providing a shop full of Italian ingredients, drinks, snacks, etc. “It’s not about the money for me, it never has been. “I love my job, and I love being able to provide for the people of this city that has given me so much,” said Ditullio. Anthony stated how it has been difficult to keep up with a full stock, as well as ordering new products for his customers with the rising taxes that small businesses are enduring. 

Another small business in Rockford that is taking a hit is Salamone’s. Salamones in a restaurant that offers fine dining, a beautiful bar, and a great atmosphere. With only two locations open in the area, and despite the immense success they have seen, the owners Benny, and Phil Salamone are starting to take hits of their own. “This hasn’t really affected us yet. We’re looking to be prepared when it does,”said Phil. Benny Salamone also added to this saying that they’ve had to cut a few costs just in case they face any financial difficulties moving forward. The Salamones are looking ahead to the future and are even talking about opening a third location in the Chicago area.

Some small businesses remain optimistic about the future. They feel as if these high interest rates and taxes will be lowered by the end of 2025. One of these businesses being a local hockey shop by the name of Pete’s Skate shop. Pete’s has been owned by Pete Scordato and has been serving the hockey community in Rockford for over 20 years, and has even ventured into selling lacrosse gear as well. Pete is very passionate about this topic saying, “I don’t think this will last long at all. I think the small businesses, especially in the Rockford area will be just fine.” In addition to this, Scordato thinks with the NHL Four Nations Tournament going on, as well as the “hype” surrounding this NHL season that he will see an influx in sales moving forward.

With the potential threat of decreased wages looming over the head of small business owners, they are taking steps forward to insulate themselves from the negative impacts of recent White House Efforts.

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In the ever evolving world of media, truly pinpointing who and what a journalist is can be difficult. Journalists, to me, are people who are trusted to spread news whether it through a local paper, or global news network. With the expanding world or technology journalism has been receiving extreme popularity from it’s online form as the time passes. From Twitter/X to Instagram, and all other social media platforms, online journalism allows for a faster and more accessible way to spread news to the world. The 24/7 news cycle has evolved journalism in a way that allows for all stories to be told. It created an expectation from the audience to receive constant updates. An example of this would be Covid-19. During Covid there were constant updates about how many people have been infected with the virus, predictions on the outcome, vaccination updates, media scares, etc. This often led to a spread of misinformation that we see so much on social media. With Convergence as well shaping journalism for the future, it is often hard to see the exact direction in which journalism is going. Convergence allows for media organizations to take their classic way of doing things and putting their news elsewhere. An example would be CNN creating a social media account to put their news out. This puts pressure on journalists to constantly have a story, and often comes with the risk of errors. Whether it’s not fact checked or something else. 

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As someone who doesn’t pay too much attention to the news, I still find it hard to avoid. With platforms such as X/Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc, national and international news is always being thrown in your face. For the most part, the news that I’m interested in is local to whatever area I am in whether it’s back in Illinois or here in Whitewater. I think local news, for the most part, is the most important sort of news. It lets you know what is going on in your area, and keeps you informed about local government. Another form of news I follow is sports. I follow ESPN and Sportscenter on Instagram and X/Twitter to stay up to date on the latest and greatest sports news. I get most of my news from Instagram when it comes to national and international news, and then popular sports sites such as Sportscenter and ESPN for my sports news. I tend not to search these sites up through Google, or really any other search engine because of the simplicity of having these apps on my phone. I can just open an app, usually Instagram, and find exactly what I’ve been looking for in an instant. 

When it comes to news and finding my information, I never tend to rely on AI. When it comes to AI I never thought about using it to find my news. A lot of the news I consume is from social media. This contains clips from actual live news broadcasts, articles to read, audio clips, along with photos of what takes place in these articles. This allows me to have a wide variety of the news I consume from local news to international. Most of the sports news I see is pictures of tweets from insiders and reporters from all over the NHL and NBA. 

Some people ask questions about what’s happening on social media, but I don’t usually get involved with the comment sections. The comment sections on social media are either all jokes, or people that want to put their own opinion out there which leads to arguments, and unnecessary comments. I have reached out to news anchors and reporters, but that was only to tour stations and ask questions to them about the industry. I toured WMTV in Madison, and spoke to a few of their anchors and reporters. One anchor in specific I spent the day with and was asking questions about how he got to where he is. He gave me a lot of great advice and hope for my future in the field of journalism. He also told me about how blogs are a great way to get started and get your name out there. I just recently uploaded a blog to the UWW site to try to get into that and talk about things important to me that are hopefully important to others. I don’t read blogs myself, but I frequently listen to podcasts. I don’t listen to informational podcasts or political podcasts unless Joe Rogan can be considered that. I spend most of my time listening to comedians discuss whatever comes to their mind. 

I love staying up to date on news such as sports and local news, but I tend to steer clear of the political news. I know a lot of those news sites are swayed more to one side or another, and it makes it hard to find reliable information. I will continue to stay up to date on sports news, and local government, and maybe in time I will find my way to be more interested in politics.

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