Citizen journalism is back in and on the news instead of reporting it. Apple stock dropped nearly 10% in a hour on 3 October, 2008 following a false story published on CNN’s iReport by a site user that Steve Jobs was in hospital from a massive heart attack.

This triggered vast navel-gazing in the online journalism industry as fingers point, conspiracy theories circulate, editors explain, and analysts ask if the iReport cutline of “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.” is also understood to be “Unverified” by readers seeing the glowing CNN logo on the iReport home page.

Following on our lecture last week it is interesting that until 2006 all iReport postings were moderated by CNN producers before going live on the site. According to CNN spokeswoman Jennifer Martin this stopped after the Citizen Journalism “game-changer” moment when a student sent in a mobile phone video of the shootings at Virgina Tech.  Viewings of this footage skyrocketed and dwarfed all the professional CNN coverage of the story and iReport was let loose independently with a moderation company but no fact-checking in the interest of publishing speed and community moderation.