I was part of an intriguing new channel for delivering content this morning, and it has me thinking about the potential for this type of process for getting the word out through non-traditional means.

You’ve probably heard something by now about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s lockout of its employees, including writers, editors, producers, and reporters. (In case you haven’t, Neville blogged about it today.) And you may have heard (since it’s been the subject of considerable discussion in the blogosphere) about how the locked-out journalists are continuing to produce content for distribution as podcasts. There’s even a site where all the various blogs and podcasts from locked-out journalists have been aggregated. The topic has been of interest to one of the listeners to the podcast Neville Hobson and I produce, “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report.” Howard Harawitz was so interested that he took some recording equipment to the CBC offices in Hallifax, Nova Scotia, where locked-out employees were manning a picket line, and he interviewed one of them. Then, he sent the audio file of the interview to Neville and me, which we included in our discussion of the labor situation and the means by which the locked-out journalists are continuing to “broadcast.”

So let’s see what happened here. We had Howard Harawitz, who is neither a reporter nor a communicator (he works in the world of music and technology), interviewing a subject who wouldn’t be able to get his views onto the CBC airwaves but ultimately gets them spread through our podcast (in addition to the podcasts they’re producing on their own). I can see this model emerging as another form of citizen journalism, in which anybody with a microphone and recorder can conduct interviews in the field and send the files to podcasters who cover that particular area of interest. Since podcasting already appeals to niche audiences, those with a particular interest in that topic will hear interviews they won’t be able to get anyplace else. Fascinating. I was thrilled to be part of this first crack at such citizen journalism—at least, the first of which I’m aware.