The problem I have with "citizen journalism" critics is that most of the time they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

The cycle starts like this: One "online media expert" makes a statement four other bloggers who read him or her take as gospel. Those four bloggers write their own blogs without doing any research. And it multiplies from there.

The bloggers pat themselves on their back for uncovering some new revelation or trend. They then proceed to comment on one another's blogs, most of the time just including links back to their own blogs.

Most of the time it's downright boring and I usually avoid these blogs like the plague.

However, because I have signed up to get Google Alerts for all new online material mentioning YourHub.com, sometime I can't avoid jumping into the fray. And today I am going to write one of those blogs. If you are a regular YourHub.com user, who could care less about the ramblings of journalists who just can't get over themselves, I would skip this blog and get on to the more interesting stuff on the site.

OK, where were we?

Last week, "self-described online media pioneer, journalist/columnist and citizen media entrepreneur" Steve Outing announced that his experiment with the Enthusiast Group was over. Outing declared that the group's five user-submitted content Web sites focusing on outdoor sports had failed.

In the column he made sure to note that he wasn't the first to give up and mentioned the tired story of Backfence.com. He went into YourHub.com a bit and said he doesn't believe it works as a destination site.

This is where I need to throw in a little disclaimer. Outing and YourHub.com have been on the outs since October 2005 after Outing did a hatchet job on YourHub.com while trumpeting Backfence.com in an Editor & Publisher article. I'll spare you all of the details, but I questioned some of his reporting techniques in a rebuttal E&P wouldn't publish. Eventually, they ran an admittedly more even-tempered response by my boss, Rocky Mountain News publisher and editor John Temple.

The next time I heard from Outing he had teamed up with Derek Scruggs, a web entrepreneur from Boulder whom I have great respect for. Derek and Steve were starting the Enthusiast Group and posting on YourHub.com to try and attract Web site users. I visited their sites a few times and even had some of our users post some relevant articles there. The sites were nice, but I believe too niche to be successful revenue wise.

Anyway, I hadn't heard much from Mr. Outing until the Google News Alert with his latest column popped up on my Blackberry. I was a bit tempted to take a dig at Steve, especially since the headline "Down and Outing" kept running through my mind, but I resisted it. I didn't want to criticize the assessment of his own experience and believe he brought up many valid points. Plus, I am not a big fan of bash blogging. I actually should have reached out a bit and helped the Enthusiast Group. I think if I had passed on a few lessons we learned a long time ago, they could have made a better run.

I decided against writing anything. The users who come to Denver metro's YourHub.com don't care about insider baseball or what some "online media pioneer" thinks. They are here to receive and share local information while participating in a fun little community that has grown online.

But then the next Google Alert crossed my Blackberry.

The bloggers had begun to regurgitate.

The first was Leah McBride Mensching, who basically created a blog entry called Citizen journalism on its way out? by combining excerpts of Outing's column with excerpts from the blog of Washington University associate director Steve Boriss.

Boriss, who somehow is an expert in these things, declared in a very generalized blog entry that citizen journalism is dead. His two main examples were Outing's very small experiment and once again, yawn, the story of Backfence.

The blog Fading to Black, which is "A look at the downward spiral of the newspaper industry in the 21st century," aggregated Menching's blog and credited her with announcing the death of citizen journalism.

Next, Jack Lail, whom I have tremendous admiration for, commented on Menching's take and wrote "The failures of the Enthusiast Group, Backfence and YourHub reflect the failure of approaches or models, approaches particularly favored by newspapers or former newspaper workers."

Now, Lail may have been referring to a YourHub.com syndicate in another state, but in Colorado we are doing just fine. Web traffic on our site has never been higher and we are closing in on 40,000 registered contributors in Colorado alone. The community dialogue during the election season was amazing and the quality of the content generated by the community keeps growing. Our site has never been more vibrant.

The trick to having successful hyperlocal sites is to ignore what the experts think and pay attention to what the community thinks. It's easy money for someone like Tom Grubisich to publish an annual holiday blog criticizing what community members in Arvada care to write about, but unless you live in Arvada how do you know what's important?

You don't.

I'm not saying YourHub.com is perfect. It's not.

We are still trying to figure out a way to properly monetize this endeavor and I will always wish our site was faster and had more bells and whistles.

From a content standpoint, we will never be satisfied. This is the Web and we are allowed to experiment as we go along. Citizen contributors attend our staff meetings, email us frequently, call us on the phone and even organize a Blogger Beer Night. They aren't afraid to vocalize what needs to be changed and criticize us for what we are doing wrong.

And when it comes to "citizen journalism," they usually know what they are talking about.