Sean Penn on Citizen Journalism

Here's an example of broadcast citizen journalism that shows:

(1) citizen journalism is coming to TV (this is just one of several efforts I've seen in the last week)
(2) journalism as social practice
(3) journalism as defined by people outside newsrooms

Click on Sean Penn to hear his description of journalism:

Current Journalism

I'm curious what the faculty think of this approach. Will efforts like this gain any traction? What does it say about the environment our students are working in? What if our students were asked to publish a story to a site like this as part of an assignment?