Rosen on Mayhill Fowler

Hi all,

I know that a simple link is not a strong way to get back into the blogging scene but I'm trying my best here. I thought this story today by Jay Rosen about how citizen journalist, and Obama supporter, Mayhill Fowler broke the Pennsylvania "bitterness" story to be a great read. Rosen, who works with Fowler over at Off the Bus (an opinion page at Huff Post), talked with her about her relationship to the campaign.

Rosen quotes Fowler as saying:

As I now realize, I have had what may have been a unique relationship with the mid-level folks at the Obama Campaign. I’ve written about the campaign critically from my very first Obama piece for OffTheBus and yet I never found any subsequent lack of access. Of course, until last week I had never written anything about Senator Obama particularly newsworthy. And so the Obama folks in California and I had an easy relationship, none of us ever dreaming that one day I would hear something important.

The question now, as Rosen's point about Meet the Press brings up, is are professional journalists willing to rely on people like Fowler for leads?