Apparently, the Knoxville News Sentinel is going to embrace local bloggers in the Knoxville area for some good-old/new fashioned citizen journalism about their own Sunshine Lawsuit against the Knox County Commission.

Jack McElroy announced on his blog that three bloggers have been selected. They are Rich Hailey, David Oatney, and Russ McBee (representing the home team!). From McElroy’s description, it sounds as though they will mostly be covering the coverage, not necessarily the trial itself (maybe Russ can elaborate on how that will work).

Anyway, its an interesting experiment in citizen journalism. I’m not sure a newspaper has ever done anything like this before. Once again, the KNS is way out front in working with the the local blogger community.

This is a huge, very big deal. Enclave agrees and pontificates on why KNS is doing this.

The fact that Mr. McElroy is utilizing bloggers is fine, but more remarkable is a rare concession from a paper that its relationship to a particular subject can adversely affect its claims to objectivity. I am impressed

It comes down to this and we’ll let Jack McElroy tell you why he’s doing this:

We journalists are supposed to keep ourselves out of the story. We’re trained to be neutral observers, reporting what we see with aloof objectivity.
But what do we do when the story is about us? How do we cover that news while maintaining credibility?

snip

On occasion, we may also publish excerpts from these blogs in the print edition.
Here’s what McBee posted in accepting the challenge to cover our coverage:
“This outreach to local bloggers seems to me to be based on two ideas: first, it appears that McElroy wants to ensure that his paper covers the trial objectively by enlisting ‘civilian’ outsiders as watchdogs. Second, it seems like an effort by McElroy to integrate the print edition of the paper with the local blogging community. … I fully support both of those ideas, which is why I volunteered to participate in watching the coverage and providing feedback.

Campers, this is HUGE.