"Citizen journalism" ain't easy, especially when your citizen journalists and audience have gadget-induced ADD, your front man is a table-thumping hothead named Al Gore, your distribution bites, and your prices are premium. So it goes, at least right now, for Current TV, the supposedly revolutionary cable TV channel headed by Gore and backed by Democratic Party financiers. More from the San Francisco Weekly.

Six months into Al Gore's experiment to turn twentysomethings into TV news junkies, the former vice president's San Francisco-based cable channel -- Current TV -- appears to have hit a snag. Prospective viewers, even those who've heard of the youth-oriented news and information channel, are having a hard time finding it on cable systems, either because cable providers aren't carrying Current or because they've relegated it to more expensive -- and therefore less purchased -- cable packages.

...Current's high-profile chairman, Gore, and its CEO, former Stanford business professor Joel Hyatt, have been on a tear lately, jawboning the cable industry for better "carriage" as they struggle to get viewers to take notice. In speeches around the country, Gore has lit into cable executives for not putting on programs "that are in the best interest of the American people"....Eschewing the traditional television news format, the channel is built around programming segments of between 30 seconds and seven minutes called "pods" -- minidocumentaries told in the lingua franca of young adults. Furthermore, about a third of the content is generated by viewers who submit their video pods to Current and are paid between $500 and $1,000 if their work is chosen to air. The result is a hodgepodge, in which compelling pieces, such as a recent look at the plight of Vietnamese chicken farmers faced with bankruptcy in the wake of the bird flu scare, often reside in close proximity with banal profiles of rock 'n' roll bands and clips from the latest movies.

Anchoring the eclectic presentation at the top and bottom of each hour is something called "Google Current," in which viewers are provided up-to-date reports on what users of the Internet search engine are looking at most. In recent cycles, that included a report on what a death row inmate in North Carolina had as his last meal (pizza and a six-pack of Royal Crown Cola). Another item drew attention to the inventor of the Bumper Dumper, a toilet seat that attaches to a trailer hitch, enabling campers and fishermen to defecate off the ends of their SUVs rather than having to trek into the woods...."I don't see much news there," says Robert Thompson, who heads the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Not if you define news as the important events we need to know as part of a civil society."

Criminy. I need cable TV to tell me what's hot on Google? And if I want offbeat, who can top Fark, for gosh sakes. Current will surely take its place next to the iLoo in the dustbin of history. A community-generated news model can work, needs to work. But better online than on cable. And with real adult supervision, please. Dan Gilmor's experience with Bayosphere will prove instructive, no doubt.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CURRENT TV, CABLE, AL GORE, JOEL HYATT, iLOO, DAN GILMOR, BAYOSPHERE, COMMUNITY JOURNALISM