Crowd sourcing and journalism

Note: This article first appeared in the trade publication Newspapers and Technology in mid-2007.

A reporter working for a local newspaper asked me recently if it was Ok to quote Wikipedia as a source. It depends on context I thought, but realized that if they did, they really needed to attribute many sources. The online encyclopedia is developed by contributor input.

 James Surowiecki’s  ‘wisdom of crowds’, or as Howard Rheingold noted in “Smart Mobs: The Next Revolution,” is an emerging trend for group behavior based on new technologies like the Internet, wireless devices, PDAs and digital phones. It holds that the network-connected group behaves intelligently and/or in an efficient manner because of the network.

The new buzz in journalism, as a result, is crowd sourcing, citizen journalism and transfer of power to the blogosphere for hyper local news.

But is that happening because the bloggers are doing a better job than traditional journalist?

Tish Grier, writing to me about a recent column I wrote on who qualifies as a journalist, says people are not necessarily looking for news reports from bloggers.

“I don't know where folks in the press get the impression that bloggers are reporting the news--or that bloggers ‘want’ to report the news.  Actually, I think this is something that's been hyped by folks like Jeff Jarvis and other insider/media pundit types.  It's the same way that there's a boatload of hype that ‘people’ are ‘clamoring’ for citizen journalism (not really, they'd just like their local papers to do a better job, but if somebody else gives them a better product, they'll take it).”

Grier blogs for Constant Observer and Assignment Zero. Assignment Zero is an attempt to bring journalists and the public together in the fashion of the open-source movement of software development. NewAssignment.Net, Wired and other participants are collaborating on the project.

“Seriously, when it comes down to it, it's really insiders in journalism who are trying to upset journalism's applecart--not ‘bloggers’ or ‘people’ or ‘citizen journalists.’  When most bloggers get press creds, we're simply writing our impressions of a scene, not doing hard and fast reporting. We know that, our readers know that--the only people who don't know that are the press. If most of us wanted to be reporters, we'd become journalists (however that's accomplished--there seems to be conflicting schools of thought on that one.)”

Jay Rosen, who is executive editor of Assignment Zero, says we should take advantage of the possibilities provided for us by the new technology.

“An outstanding fact of the Net era is that costs for people to find each other, share information, and work together are falling rapidly. This should have consequences for reporting big, moving stories where the truth is distributed around. By pooling their intelligence and dividing up the work, a network of journalists and volunteer users should be able to find out things that the larger public needs to know,” he wrote in a letter to participants of Assignment Zero.

Grier, however, holds that it is really two different things.

“It will never cease to amaze me how the press can't seem to get with the concept that most blogs--and most bloggers--are having conversations, not reporting.  We put stuff out there to get people to talk ‘to’ us or ‘about’ what we said.  It's not about reporting at all.  And maybe if we get credentialed to go into the hallowed halls of Congress--well, maybe it's to provide a little bit of fly-on-the-wall observation and transparency to the whole process.”

Yes, and maybe the whole process can stand to be more open and subject to the give and take of what news consumers want. I think we are likely to find that out.

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