Magic formula for citizen journalism remains elusive

John Ndege blogs the demise of his London-based ScribbleSheet citizen journalism site, which launched last September, in a post titled "The Problem with Citizen Journalism.".

Ndege has some observations.

Among them, he thinks NowPublic may have a potentially sucessful model, particularly as a result of its agreement with the Associated Press.

ScribbleSheet is another in a long stream of examples of the how very tough it is to build a successful community model -- as a business.

One of Ndege's hard learnings: Simple display advertising won't cut it.

That calls into question the business models of a large number of sites.