I know, participatory journalism is often used as a synonym for citizen journalism, but what then should we make of this? No fiction here, so it's not Gonzo journalism...

During the recent rioting in Copenhagen, a journalist from Nyhedsavisen was suspended after he described in an article how he joined the demonstrators in stone-throwing and barricading the streets. I guess you could call it a kind of participatory mainstream journalism - which we seem to be creating some sort of tradition for in Scandinavia these days, with this story following hot on the heels of the Swedish reporter who reported his own court case.

At least the journalist from Nyhedsavisen was fully honest about the role he played in the case he reported, you can read his article here (in Danish, courtesy of NA24 Propaganda): it opens with a sentence on how throwing bricks makes your arm hurt, and a description of how he gets 'carried away'. If we leave the ethics aside, it's actually a pretty good article - it comes close to Gonzo-style journalism and does a great job of conveying the atmosphere.

In contrast, the Swedish reporter who reported his own court case wrote the article in third person, and the only clue we get to how it might be his own trial he is writing about is by connecting the byline with the name of the person he describes in the article - Niclas Rislund + Niclas Rislund, aha... If only he had written that piece in first person, as a column or blog post - like: "today I was sentenced to xx for pretending to be a policeman and it felt like..." - we might have laughed with him and his editor instead of laughing of them, called the editor innovative even...