From the Knight Citizen News Network (KCNN) "About" page:

The Knight Citizen News Network is a self-help portal that guides both ordinary citizens and traditional journalists in launching and responsibly operating community news and information sites.
It seeks to help build capacity for citizens who want to start their own news ventures and to open the doors to citizen participation for traditional news organizations seeking to embrace user-generated content.
Above all it seeks to impart an understanding of the qualities that make for responsible and credible journalism. The Network will offer numerous learning modules with guidance on how to populate citizen news sites with content, how to use databases and new technology to jumpstart reporting, and how to train citizen journalists. It will provide a unique database of known citizen media sites, searchable by town and other criteria.
It will also undertake and spotlight current research on citizen media trends.
The Network is an initiative of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. J-Lab administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. It offers micro grants for citizen media start-ups through its New Voices program. And it offers tutorials on how to use software and hardware to embark on community publishing at www.J-Learning.org.
The John F. and James L. Knight Foundation fully support The Knight Citizen News Network and J-Lab’s other citizen media activities.

Much has been made recently about how to effectively harness the potential power of citizen journalism. KCNN believes citizen journalists, first and foremost, need to understand the qualities and standards that distinguish responsible, credible journalism from innuendo and gossip. CCJ shares these ideals, and encourages you to make use of the resources and support KCNN provides.