Will citizen journalism be the force that brings down Obama? I don’t think so, but the question brings up some interesting points. Although the press has been saturated with stories about Barack Obama’s now infamous statement about how bitter middle-Americans “cling to guns and religion,” few have looked at the broader implication for political communication; namely the death of “off the record.”

For the candidate with the strongest Web 2.0 presence (leading in YouTube videos, Facebook friends, blog mentions on Technorati, and many other indicators), it’s ironic that another Web 2.0 force – citizen journalism – has dealt him the biggest blow to his campaign so far. Mayhill Fowler, the 61-year-old political blogger (and Obama supporter) that managed to record Barack Obama’s speech while at a fund-raising dinner is a member of Off The Bus, a collaborative project with the Huffington Post to cover the elections with a network of citizen journalists.

The fact that the fundraising event was technically “off the record” and journalists weren’t invited shows just how blurred the lines are becoming between official press and everyday citizens. As I said before, the idea of “off the record’ no longer exists. Every word that comes out of a candidate’s mouth must now be scrutinized by the PR/campaign machine. Just think about that for a second. What will future campaigns look like? Will the candidate of the future just be one of those crazy humanoid robots from Japan that spews pre-recorded sound bites?

Citizen journalism goes beyond mere blogging. The new model of distributed reporting combines professional journalism with amateur contributors (also known as “pro-am” reporting). There are literally hundreds of examples of this type of phenomenon taking off globally. Some of the bigger names in the game are You Witness News beta from Yahoo! News and Reuters and iReport beta from CNN. iReport allows users to vote on stories, has profile pages for users to build their reputation/credibility as reporters, and even has an “Assignment Desk” where CNN lists topics for which they are looking for stories. Top stories can make their way to the main CNN network, although, surprisingly, reporters still don’t get paid. In the 20 months since it launched, iReport has posted over 100,000 user-generated stories from close to 1,500 citizen journalists. According to the site, over 900 stories made it to CNN’s main network last month.

Now, just for fun, and to show that I bear no ill will towards Obama, here’s a video I found on the Google Maps/YouTube mashup for Super Tuesday.