Fair enough; the citizen journalism aspect of a message board can indeed be considered news reporting in a way, although without a structure to verify, organize and place those first-hand accounts in context, sometimes that could just be considered information. But as you rightly point out, those lines are increasingly being blurred. And that’s (usually) a good thing.

If, say, you folks actively send someone to liveblog a school board candidate forum, you’re obviously engaged in gathering and publishing news. Anyone who says otherwise has an ulterior motive.

If people at JC List are engaged in an idiotic mudfight over whether Brooklyn is nicer than Jersey City, and whether posting comments about preferring Brooklyn to Jersey City on JC List is acceptable, that’s obviously not anything related to the gathering or distribution of news.

But, if a neighborhood group leader posts a report on crime in downtown Jersey City on JC List, and other people post their personal observations about crime in the neighborhood, then, up the point when the thread turns into a debate about racism and anti-yuppie-ism, I think that is a kind of interesting, informal news effort. You could argue that the neighborhood group leader is doing something similar to traditional journalism.

In a lot of cases, message board “reporters” do a great job of covering neighborhood news and major catastrophes (e.g., Katrina, and the earthquake in Iran a few years back).

But, of course, ordinary people writing first-hand accounts when they feel like it is different from what you folks do, and, as you acknowledge, what you folks do is different from what the Jersey Journal does.

Despite the offense we take at being lumped in with message boards, which you’ve profoundly misidentified as “news efforts,” in your comment, you’re (partly) right.

But forget about what message board users would lose if the Journal went under; what about what the city would lose? We certainly don’t have any ill wishes towards our fellow newsfolk at 30 JSQ, and think it would be bad for democracy and accountability if there were one less news outlet here. Jersey City is already suffering from a pretty substantial media deficit compared to comparable cities across the country; it doesn’t need to get any worse.

Note that people on JC List, Wired JC and even JC Independent depend very heavily on Jersey Journal links. If the Journal died, local Web news efforts would lose half or more of their copy.

1. Struggle with declining circulation (and revenues)

2. Cut staff

3. Have less compelling content created by fewer, more overworked staffers.

4. REPEAT