‘I’m not an inventor. I’m an improver. I see things that are wrong, and I improve them. And this is broken.’

Crowdsourcing

After reading Jeff Howe's article, I am left with the question: what is the difference between a freelance journalist and a 'crowdsourcing'/citizen journalist? More simply, who is considered a journalist? Does declaring a job title as journalist make a journalist? I don't like this divide between real journalists and readers who write articles. A BA from Ithaca College certainly does not make me feel like a journalists.

However, I find myself thinking hypocritically... because I agree, on the surface, that crowdsourcing websites are complimentary not competition to traditional news organizations. Maybe I don't really believe that, perhaps it is an idea I feel I should believe.

It makes a lot of financial sense to engage the readers in contributing. If anything, having a 'contributor' in regions that money limits stationing 'real journalists' provides infinite story tips that never would be heard.

I'm still hung up on my thoughts on real journalists... I think I need to sit on it for a bit, perhaps I will get back to it later in this entry.

The Blogging Journalist

As an editor, I would encourage my writers to blog. One concept that I've stressed in my entries is to create some sort of loyalty between the writer and the readers, not particularly between the writer and the news org. Blogging will allow this to happen. I agree with Paul Bradshaw, journalists can receive great leads from their readers via blog. Writers should be thinking of the readers when writing, and not just in terms of marketing but a genuine concern for the readers best interest.

page-view whores

Does it really matter who breaks the story first, when the 'competition' is just seconds behind? Everything is at high-speed these days that it doesn't seem to matter anymore. As Bob Steele points out, twitters and high connectivity can create major ethical dilemmas and situations where few news orgs could pass an actual malice test. Where is the quality and thoroughness? I guess I see myself as more of a feature writer and am just having a difficult time understanding the need to twitter information at a child's funeral.

I am not as tech savvy as I once was... however I would encourage my writers to use the new tools of today. I think the issue is that journalists who are raised by these new tools will fail in the courts eyes in using standard journalistic practices. I don't think you can attribute crucial facts of a story to someone who commented on your blog. But this issue was addressed in cases like Curtis v Butts, just without the blogs and tweets. Source credibility always has been important... it shouldn't change to do the digital age.

Do what you do best. Link to the rest

So I checked out the BusinessWeek Business Exchange... and I liked it. There was an obvious separation between the magazine website and the Exchange community. The fact that a news org simultaneously produces a news site and a community Exchange is impressive. Money is the key, and even if readers are spending more time on the exchange and leaving BusinessWeek, BusinessWeek still makes money from outsourcing... I'm actually kind of confused as to how the exchange makes money. There is one large banner ad and then a small box of Google ads. I guess the idea is to keep BusinessWeek fresh in the readers mind and hopefully become the readers first stop. As I multitask, blog and sniff around the Exchange, I am more and more impressed with the Exchange. Keep the traditional news site and compliment the site with a community of links. The transparency in no preference between the sources of links is great. My loyalty to BusinessWeek is enhanced by the news orgs willingness to redirect me.

I was looking at a highly active users profile and was directed to an article on Bentley University's newspaper... the site has a 'double-click any word' feature that is pretty impressive. A pop up shows what answers.com has to say about the word or key phrase then you can look at what wikipedia has to say about the word. The best thing is it is all done in a pop up and you never leave the original article.


The main idea I will walk away with from this week's readings is the complimentary BusinessWeek Exchange. Why completely revamp the way the news is generated? simply compliment the news. I think this is a safe move. Safe is good for now, but I hope BusinessWeek is still brainstorming.