Uni of Sydney is paying bloggers

Citizen journalism or blogging, has become an increasingly important element in business, education, and daily life for many. The opinions and insights given by individuals is becoming the news that is reported, often a few days after it appears in blogs, in the major newspapers and broadcast media.

TIM Spencer is paid to blog. So are nine other students at the University of Sydney, which has embarked on a big blog adventure.

"We got hundreds of applications, it was a massive recruitment task," Joanna Cohen says.

She's blog mistress of Sydney Life, where freshers and old hands put a personal spin on campus life for curious, even apprehensive school-leavers. Like most blogs it has regular, journal-like entries with a comment thread. But the home page banner carries the university shield and Cohen, Sydney's marketing information manager, vets every post before it's uploaded.

Can big institutions tame the free-spirited blog format?

The answer to the question above might be a careful rephrasing: Do big institutions want to tame the free-spirited blog format?

Obviously, some privacy has to be respected. Copyrights can be a tricky business when it comes to publicly funded institutions and students. Publicized information, such as from newspapers and radio, come under the allowances of "fair use" of articles.

Public officials are always subject to scrutiny by name.
Does that include officials of fully-funded school?
What effect does partial funding have on the privacy of officials?

Does a university want to teach the power of individual opinion and freedom of speech? .. or does it want to be an example of censorship?

So far, blogging is the voice of the people. It is being heard in all the right places.