Lots of people walk through the doors of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism every day. Just this past month, some of them have included Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson; Mark Halperin and John Heileman, co-authors of the best-selling non-fiction book Game Change; Steven Berlin Johnson, co-creator of the hyperlocal site Outside.In; and John Ciampa, a thirty-seven-year-old former cement truck driver who is trying to remake himself as a professional blogger and citizen journalist.

Ciampa makes ends meet by working side gigs as a stagehand, and he was on Columbia’s campus recently setting up the massive tents, bleachers, stages, and video screens for the university’s graduation ceremonies. He stumbled into the journalism building during a break, looking for someone to interview for professional journalism tips to publish on his forthcoming Web site, which will be dedicated to teaching people how to be—in Ciampa’s words—“street journalists.”

Here was a real, live citizen journalist: a guy full of ambition, enthusiasm, and, it turns out, pretty good news instincts; creating his own media presence all without much formal training or outside help. In a building full of professionals who worry constantly about the future of journalism and their ability to carve out a living in it, he was practically a mythical creature—a sort of phenomenon everyone speaks about in hushed tones but that few had ever glimpsed up close before.

A Long Island native who now lives in Astoria, Ciampa walked in the door wearing black Adidas track pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap, and—like any good blogger—clutching a paper cup of Starbucks coffee. Online, he identifies himself like this: “John Ciampa is a professional Blogger, Citizen Journalist, self-taught marketing person and Eagle Scout. He is actually the perfect example of the American entrepreneur and inventor.”

Ciampa says he got interested in blogging after reading a CNNMoney story about how blogging was “the next big thing.” He took it to heart, and started a blog about snowboarding. In the days before FCC disclosure regulations, he parlayed that site into a stay at Whistler Blackcomb for him and ten friends, with a heli-skiing outing thrown in, all in exchange for writing about the experience. He then became interested in search engine optimization after starting a fashion blog for his twelve-year-old niece. “FashionExpert.com” was taken, so he called it FashionExpertGirl.com. Now when you Google “fashion expert,” his niece’s blog and her critiques of Disney Channel actress’s red carpet outfits, as well as her take on New York Fashion Week looks, appears on the first page of results.

Three years ago, he started Bloggersschool.com (Tagline: You have a voice! We teach you how to use it), a Web resource full of podcasts and blogging tips on everything from how to use Wordpress and keyword your site so it rises to the top of searches, to how businesses can take advantage of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Using the Bloggers School name, Ciampa and his business partner/fiancée, Carolina Frederico, consult with other businesses—including a Greek gyro shop in Astoria called BZ Grill and a florist in Ozone Park called A Little Shop of Flowers—on how to cultivate their Web presence, for a fee. They also hold a real-life class each month to teach mid-career types, business owners, and hobbyists how to create an online reputation that promotes their brand or expertise.

Now his fiancée, a former journalist from Brazil, helps him run all aspects of Bloggers School. (It was her idea to start the citizen journalism site.) The two met when Frederico was waitressing at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen; Ciampa approached her after he saw her speaking to three different tables in three different languages. “He said, ‘I’m a blogger.’ I never heard anybody introducing themselves as a blogger, because a lot of people have blogs but don’t introduce themselves as bloggers,” Frederico remembered.

She checked out his blog, he checked out hers (written in Portuguese about sex and dating) and a bond was forged. Her first impression: “This kid has a lot of good stuff, but punctuation—and English is not my mother language—I was like ‘Wow, this could be much better.’”

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