Dear citizen reporters,

Are citizen media initiatives a fad or a sustainable new part of the emerging media landscape? J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism is researching the prospects for sustainability as part of a new project funded by the Ford Foundation.

J-Lab, based at the University of Maryland, funds citizen media news start-ups under its New Voices initiative.

Launching today is an online survey seeking responses from both citizen media consumers and content contributors.

We are seeking to create a baseline of information about how these sites started, what topics they cover, the impact they're having on their communities, how they operate, and how they hope to remain viable.

After you take the survey, you will be able to see instant results to key questions.

The results of the survey, as well as our findings from in-depth interviews with more than 30 citizen media site operators, will be available in a report to be published soon.

Please take a few minutes to visit the URL below and fill out the survey. Any registration information will only be used to send you a link to the completed report.

To take the survey, click here. (If the link does not work, copy and paste this URL in your browser: http://showofhands.com/jlab)

We greatly appreciate your time and thanks for participating!

Craig Stone
Web Editor
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
craig@j-lab.org