A small furore broke out in the digital media world last Friday when a phoney news report stating that Steve Jobs had had a heart attack briefly tanked Apple's stock. The report appeared on CNN's iReport, a section of the giant news site that allows anyone, aka citizen journalists, to submit their own news.

CNN has a very clear disclaimer that the iReport stories are unvetted and unverified, and only make it to the main CNN site after proper professional review. Yet the fact that iReport is associated with CNN was enough to give the fake Steve Jobs report the credibility and exposure that it likely would not have had if it appeared on, say, a personal blog site. The case raises some interesting questions about citizen media and the meaning of brands in the news world.

I should start by saying that my site, NewWest.Net, also has a section called Unfiltered in which we invite any registered user to contribute. As with CNN, there are clear disclaimers, and we "promote" stories to the main pages of the site only if our editorial staff has independently reviewed them.

The idea here is to open up the site, on the logical (but fairly new) premise that news organisations and professional reporters are not the source of all news. At the same time, we are believers in the idea that brands matter in the news space, and that establishing what NewWest.Net stands for, and what are standard are, is critical to our long-term success.

We've never had an incident like the iReport debacle, and to be honest we probably don't (yet!) have the huge reach and brand recognition to have exactly this kind of issue. But we do face the same tricky balance: how do we welcome a broad range of contributors, and at the same time maintain our brand integrity?

Some commentators, including the well-regarded tech news site ReadWriteWeb, have declared that Friday's incident means the very notion of citizen journalism is flawed, or at least cannot be practised by branded news organisations. That seems like a bit of panicked response: as PaidContent.Org points out in a much more measured response, all systems can be gamed.

If we threw out every citizen media experiment because of the possibility of manipulation, we could say goodbye to Digg, Yelp and many of the other successful new media sites on the planet. And if the argument is that branded news organisations can't touch non-professional content, then they'd eventually be ghettoised to the point of irrelevance.

Indeed, the criticism of CNN has plenty of ironies. Mainstream media organisations these days are relentlessly pilloried for arrogantly adhering to the idea that professional writers and editors (as opposed to "the crowd") should decide what's interesting, credible, and worth reporting upon.

Financiers of new media companies – and I heard this myself more than once this week – are dismissive of business plans that involve spending money on those said-same editors and writers; so much cheaper to get unpaid "citizens" to do the work! And the rise of the blogosphere has led some to conclude that branded news organisations are dead; individuals will "be their own brands," and regarded as credible or not depending on their personal track record.

And yet as soon as a case arises where a little professional reporting – i.e. calling up Apple and seeing what they say – would have prevented what appears to be stock manipulation, the criticism runs the other way.

I remain a huge believer in what we call a "pro-am" model of journalism. Professionals have a lot to bring to the table, and quality news sites will need to have plenty of them. At the same time, it's clear that many non-professionals – be they subject-matter experts, young aspiring writers, or people who happen to be standing there when news happens – have a great deal to contribute as well.

I'm also a believer in the importance of the brand. Most people will never, if ever, have the time or inclination to have an opinion about the credibility of dozens of different individual writers. The journalists who could arguably be considered brands of their own these days, have almost without exception achieved that status via their association with a prestigious news organisation.

How to combine the brand and the pro-am, though, is definitely a work in progress. I trust CNN, and many others, won't be giving up the fight.

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Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

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