…locus of our attention, and our typologies, should be at the intersection between the professional and the amateur. As many people have argued, it’s no longer meaningful to distinguish between a “corporate” or “traditional” journalist from a “blogging” journalist. This is a mistake a lot of traditional journalists still make when discussing online media — you don’t get special analytic consideration just because you work for a newspaper, magazine, or an affiliated website. The whole notion that you would is a little ridiculous. Many journalists these days write for blogs affiliated with newspapers with very low readership and revenue, and then go on to write for standalone publications with much greater institutional resources.

via The future of news in 4 dimensions: Charting new kinds of news orgs » Nieman Journalism Lab.

This is a very grounded look at citizen journalism over several years. I agree that the frame for looking at this is amateur vs. professional, rather than blogging journalist vs. corporate journalist or some such thing. I would add to the quote above, that it isn’t only “journalists” who write at one site for low remuneration/readership, but then move on to bigger readership/reward sites.