However that's not what The Huffington Post is saying. "Our blogger guidelines remain the same," Huffington Post spokesman Mario Ruiz told The Atlantic Wire. "We pledged to work with the Guild to continue to spotlight and protect the work of journalists. Our goals are the same: to support the necessary work of professional reporters."

Ruiz added that they'll continue with their citizen journalism projects for the 2012 election. "We remain excited about and committed to our Eyes and Ears citizen journalism initiative," he said in an email on Friday. "In fact, Ryan Grim in his remarks to the Guild at its yearly dinner last night explained the value of citizen journalism, and underscored that this complements the necessary work of paid reporters--it's not meant to replace it."

Citizen journalism has been a boon for the Huffington Post in the past. In 2009, as part of the Off The Bus program, citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler secured what was arguably HuffPost's biggest scoop, a recording of then-candidate Obama complaining about "bitter" Americans who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." The story was a huge blow to the Obama campaign.

While citizen journalists enter into a different agreement, Huffington Post bloggers are free to cover the news and are in contact with editors.

(Full Disclosure: I worked as an editor at the Huffington Post from 2009 and 2010, working on a number of their citizen journalism efforts.)

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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