NYT and citizen journalists?

I read in my I WANT MEDIA newsletter yesterday that the prestigious New York Times is adapting to Web 2.0 culture by looking for ways to use content from "non professional journalists" (otherwise known as citizen journalists) on its Web site, particularly using bloggers.

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told those at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco Tuesday that The Times has been slow in incorporating bloggers and other citizen journalists into its news organization, something other mainstream media has been doing (think BBC or CNN's iReport).

But The Times isn't jumping into anything just yet. Sulzberger said that "finding the right balance isn't easy" and they want to find citizen journalists they can trust (makes sense because The Times is the most prestigious newspaper in the country). I think the fact that The Times is considering allowing outside "journalists" to contribute to its site is indicative of just how big the Internet has become in the media, and how there really is no fighting non-traditional journalism if the mainstream media wants to survive.