Crowdsourcing: Getting The Milk For Free
The articles on “crowdsourcing” have been increasing exponentially across the mainstream media as they get a load of what Gannett, Reuters, and Yahoo are doing. On one hand, these opportunities for hyper-local journalism and citizen journalists are exciting and open up some interesting opportunities for local media and members of the community, but I find myself wondering at what point utilizing the work of citizen journalists and these poor part-time mobile journalists becomes exploitation by these large media corporations? After all, Gannett and other news outlets are utilizing these new methods to try and retain or win back readers they are losing to independent news outlets or even bloggers so free or almost free content generation by citizen journalists helps keep them in the game. Which is better? A revitalized traditional news product like the RGJ using the free content generated by citizen journalists or a new crop of independent publications and websites generated by those same people? I’m not sure, but its an important question to consider, because to me it looks like the mainstream media conglomerates are positioning themselves to reabsorb the market they’ve lost by swallowing up the new media responsible for that loss–citizen journalists.
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Bloggers as Crowdsourcers
A whole lot of you might be wondering why everyone is talking about “crowdsourcing”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html right now. And also whether it’s even a word. Well, “here’s why”:http://www.wired.com/news/culture/media/0,…
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I hate to plug on podcast, but we just interviewed Steve Fine, Internet Manager for the RGJ.com, and I think what he has to say is relevant to this exact post: http://twelvehorses.typepad.com/reno_horse_power/2006/12/episode_26_stev.html
Kind of, but not the issue I brought up which is will companies like Gannet succeed in convincing the community to provide their content so much so that they make local citizen journalism or community sites outside of their purview or control impossible, or at least very difficult.
You’re neglecting the middle ground. Maybe they “big media” does take over the blogging world, but if that actually helps journalism, who cares? You’ve said it yourself, you aren’t trying to be an independent “journalist” so why worry so much?
Podcasting is a very similar topic. There were quite a few people, including myself, who were doing it and trying to make something of it when Apple became involved by adding it to iTunes. All of a sudden, the “big media” was taking it over. I was pissed at first, but so far, all they’ve done is make podcasting a better medium. That can happen with blogging and citizen journalism, too. Maybe the media jumping on board with anyone who wants to do original reporting in their neighborhood or city is a good thing. Maybe not. All I know at this point is that far more people read the paper than blogs, and if that readership translates over to blogs, then overall the media improves.