The Houston Chronicle tested out citizen journalism during the recent Hurricane Rita, enlisting about a dozen local bloggers to write a collective "Stormwatchers" blog - providing their unfiltered commentary (!) about their experiences.

Online citizen journalism, especially via blogs, has been around for a while and is growing. You can even take journalism school courses in it.

What I think is interesting is seeing mainstream media outlets like the Chronicle tap into this.

What does the Chronicle get out of it? A range of diverse voices, on the ground experiences, compelling text and photos -- all-in-all a strong magnet for readers, I think.

Over the few days of the storm event, they had a few dozen posts - almost hourly stories, colorful tales of evacuating or staying put, as well as pictures of traffic jams and empty store shelves. Following the storm, the Chronicle blog asked for feedback about the experiment; most comments were positive, like this:

A round of applause to Dwight and his blogging minions! I too, fled Houston and was very content to be able to keep up with things in Houston written by bloggers and not by the over-hyped TV media that I feel helped fuel the mass panic. I also enjoyed the fact that if I couldn't get online, I could download the Stormwatchers headlines via XML/RSS on my mobile device. I would love to see more 'citizen-journalism' blogs on various events, not just hurricanes. Thanks to Dwight, The Chronicle and those that participated!

There is a fuller story about Chronicle's efforts in a story by the AP's Anick Jesdanun, courtesy of the MIT Technology Review.