Gillmor Goes Non-profit With Citizen Media Center

Dan Gillmor, author of “We the Media” — and I think it’s fair to call him the leading authority on citizen (or grassroots) journalism — announced today that in 2006 he’ll be forming a non-profit Center for Citizen Media. The organization will be affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School. Gillmor’s principal office will be located at Berkeley, and he will be an I.F. Stone Teaching Fellow; at Berkman he’ll be a research fellow.

In his announcement on his blog at Bayosphere, Gillmor says, “The goals are to study, encourage, and help enable the emergent grassroots media sphere, with a major focus on citizen journalism.” The center will be non-partisan.

Among the things he’ll be doing: “We also plan to sponsor regular gatherings at both locations (and, I hope, elsewhere in my travels) for people interested in citizen journalism.”

What this means for Bayosphere, the for-profit citizen-journalism venture that Gillmor has been working on since leaving his job as a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, is not yet clear.

(Disclosure: Gillmor is putting together a volunteer advisory board for the Center for Citizen Media, and I’ve agreed to serve on it.)