Is This the Future of News?

WirePosted points us to a story discussing the future of news reporting. For over a year, CNN has been accepting user-generated news stories and posting the best of them for all to see. Earlier this week, CNN handed over the reins of iReport.com, allowing unfiltered and unedited content from anyone who cares to participate, provided it adheres to "established community guidelines". Analysts point to the amateur footage from the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse as an example of the capabilities of distributed reporting. Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?

Comments

Not just No

[DynaSoar]

... but HELL no.

"Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?"

This can be done for free. That doesn't sell advertising. CNN et al. would never let that happen. Instead they're encapsulating the user generated stuff within their own domain where they can use it to support their ad money generating bread and butter. Not embedding this stuff within their own output would be more of a threat.

Re:Not just No

[Bootle]

And they save a butt-ton of money by not having to pay reporter's salaries to the chumps who submit stuff!

Re:Not just No

[someme2]

Instead they're encapsulating the user generated stuff within their own domain where they can use it to support their ad money generating bread and butter. Not embedding this stuff within their own output would be more of a threat.

And they will still use all the best content in their mainstream news. You grant them cost free rights to all of the content you submit. It's in the terms of use. Consequently all of the really valuable footage can still be broadcast on CNN, in addition the stuff that has been found to work on ireport.com by popular vote.

It's perfect. They create a pre-screening room that tests all kinds of content and also makes some money, generates a few content gems (bridge collapse footage, etc.) every once in a while and that doesn't affect the serious/professional-flavour of their premium brand. Still they exploit the top content in all of their programs.

Now to really change the news business: Can't someone create a popular site that does auctions of valuable cell phone footage, with news companies as bidders? Stop giving away your content for free, people!

Re:Not just No

[Anonymous Coward]

Now to really change the news business: Can't someone create a popular site that does auctions of valuable cell phone footage, with news companies as bidders? Stop giving away your content for free, people!

I assume you feel the same way about Wikipedia and the **for profit** Wikia Search? Yes? Stop giving away your content for free? Hmmmm?

Re:Not just No

[sgt_doom]

Naaaah....I really think this is the future of news:

The number of corporations dominating the US mainstream media:

1983 = 50

1993 = 14

2008 = 5

A Million Monkeys

[Gothmolly]

You can put a million monkeys in front of typewriters, but yet AOL is nothing like Shakespeare. Just because Sally Jo Walmart captures something on her cellphone camera, and has the wherewithal to upload it to CNN, doesn't mean that its news, insightful, or "appropriate" to their nebulous guidelines. Nothing shocking or anti-establishment will ever air, nor will anything that scoops CNN itself. Its nice and bloggy and Web-two-oh, but so are Digg and Fark and Slashdot.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[CrazedWalrus]

I don't really get this elitism when it comes to the press. Why is it that somebody with a video camera of first-person experience is considered a monkey? Why are the highly-paid monkeys a thousand miles away, who are taking their lines from teleprompters more qualified than the monkey who was there? Because there might be grammar mistakes? Not everyone is an English major, but that doesn't make them a monkey.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[cliffiecee]

"Why are the highly-paid monkeys a thousand miles away, who are taking their lines from teleprompters more qualified than the monkey who was there? Because there might be grammar mistakes?"

Not because there might be grammar mistakes, but because there might be logic mistakes- incorrect assumptions, poor analogies, or fallacious reasoning. Which isn't to say that's exactly what we get with so-called liberal or conservative media; but at least they make an effort to appear balanced, and can (and should) be called on it when they don't make the effort. The man-on-the-street lacks that accountability.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[CrazedWalrus]

Amigo, you're calling me on what you consider a logic error, and I'm not a professional. It's the social aspect that makes this work. If the original commenter asserts something fallacious, he can be called on it. Contrast that with the news networks, who are deliberately misleading and well-paid to be so.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[CrazedWalrus]

The incredible inaccuracy of eye witness accounts is well known. It is also a truism that the camera lies; a singe perspective can be dangerous.

Which is exactly why the news media has so much power. They choose the shots that say what they want them to say. Socially-driven content will contain multiple perspectives from multiple sources. It is therefore easier to compare and find the truth -- even if an individual perspective is incorrect.

There's a helluva lot to be said for people interested in journalism to be able to earn a living from it, to earn respect for doing a good job, and for having an organisation that can support them, mentor them as they learn their trade, and get them direct access to the highest politicians in their country.

That may be true, and I'm not saying necessarily that major media has no place at all. I'm just saying that socially-driven news sites are a necessary competition, supplement, and counter-agent.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[vertinox]

The incredible inaccuracy of eye witness accounts is well known. It is also a truism that the camera lies; a singe perspective can be dangerous. Grammar has nothing to do with it. Being objective does not mean elitism.

True objectivism would review all sources and not just trusted or professional ones. Simply dismissing eye witness accounts and photographic evidence because they could be wrong is not objective either.

Take the execution of Saddam Hussein. One could troll Youtube for countless uncensored versions of it, but on the nightly news, it played without sound and usually cut off right before they dropped him.

If you think people can't handle the whole part of the news, then perhaps that is where elitism comes into play. The problem with the current professional news in all mediums is that there is some type of spin on it with subtraction of context and addition of irrelevant language.

Of course, that could simply be a problem with the English language and I'd rather see facts and unedited media first hand than have someone decide what is important to me.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[CrazedWalrus]

No. It's elitism when these guys have the power to greatly influence elections, decide when footage is something we "shouldn't see" (someone else mentioned the Hussein hanging), or otherwise decide which information they want the public to know or the perceptions they should have. There's a difference between doing a good job and abusing your pulpit.

Obviously a trained reporter can *report* better than an amateur, but there's not a lot of reporting going on nowadays. It's mostly "Hey, this happened. The next hour is my opinion and speculation presented as fact."

Air traffic control and news media are pretty different animals as well, so I'm not so sure your analogy flies, so to speak. Either way, if air traffic controllers spent 5% of their time controlling traffic and the other 95% arguing over whether Boeing or Airbus will win that big defense contract (or whatever), I'd say they weren't very good air traffic controllers either.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[Alchemist253]

First, I think you will find many people (myself included), who have much more respect for PRINT journalists than TELEVISION journalists. It has been observed (on C-SPAN, don't have the reference unfortunately) that evening news typically rips stories from the pages of that morning's New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

Second, while I will concede that some rather trivial local affairs (e.g. the iron chef competition at the county fair) could be covered adequately by "citizen journalists," real INVESTIGATIVE reporting (which lies at the heart of the First Amendment protection of the Press) is very difficult, very time consuming, and very expensive. It is unlikely that the general public will ever be able to break meaningful stories on subjects like Watergate, warrantless wiretapping, or Enron. The reasons for this are manifold, and are at least in part articulated by Scott Gant ("We're All Journalists Now"):

i) The working Press have special access privileges (e.g. priority seating in courtrooms, embedded reporting in wartimes, etc.) that must be limited out of physical necessity. They also receive privileged treatment that would be financially impractical if doled out to everyone (e.g. no-cost Freedom of Information Act requests).

ii) To understand subjects like Enron in even a moderately sophisticated manner requires devoting one's life to their study, for weeks, months, or even YEARS. Since the vast majority of the non-Press have day jobs, this is all but impossible.

iii) The Press rely heavily on confidential sources, not necessarily to provide substantive information (certainly not without fact-checking) but certainly to provide a starting point for future information. Such sources confide in the Press because of a long tradition of confidentiality and respect by members of the Press; indeed, reporters have gone to prison for refusing to disclose their sources. Additionally, confidential sources - who very well could be breaking the law by talking to reporters - may have a degree of trust that a reporter will not disclose information that is unduly personally damaging or that would materially harm the national interest. It is unlikely that Daniel Ellsberg would have leaked the Pentagon Papers to his hairdresser. (And if anyone reading this does not know the name Daniel Ellsberg, for the love of God pick up a history book.)

iv) No matter what pundits may say, journalists at major newspapers take great pains to be unbiased. (Do not confuse the opinion pages with the news pages; in good newspapers there is NO crosstalk between the two.) If you don't believe me, look at the news sections of the Wall Street Journal or the Christian Science Monitor. Neither neoconservativism (abundant in the editorial's of the former) nor religion (built into the charter of the latter) creep into the news in either. Similarly, the New York Times - bastion of editorial liberalism - always takes care to give all sides of an issue voice in a news article. While blogs and websites DO exist with a similar level of impartiality, they are few and far between. It simply is not the way of the blogger (or the human in general).

Re:A Million Monkeys

[rmckeethen]

While it's true that reporters can sometimes get privileged access -- to crime scenes for example, if you've taken the time to get a press pass beforehand and if the police are feeling particularly generous that day -- courtroom access isn't always privileged, at least not here in California. If you want to report on courtroom proceedings in California, you have no more special access than any other citizen who happens to show up for a courtroom seat that day. Usually, your best bet to get one of a limited number of seats in the gallery for a popular trial is to simply arrive at the courthouse as early as you can, or take a bit of a risk by hiring someone to stand in line for you. As for free FOIAs, well... journalists receive the same benefits students and researchers receive, essentially no-charge records searches and the first 100 pages of the documents are free. I suppose you can count that as privileged access, but overall it's a fairly minor perk for a working journalist.

But these minor points aside, I totally agree with the main thrust of your argument; print journalists are an essential piece of the news-gathering process, not easily eclipsed or replaced by other types of journalists. Television news editors don't seem to have the patience for in-depth investigative work, television viewers don't seem to notice the lack thereof and from what I've seen with most bloggers, a great deal of the so-called news they generate is simply links to print articles and commentary on those same articles.

Sometimes, gathering news can be as easy as snapping a picture of a bridge collapse as it's happening, but much more often it gets deeper and more complex than simply being at the right place at the right time. For the foreseeable future, I can't imagine citizen journalists -- or television journalists -- replacing print journalists for news that requires a little digging and a few key sources in critical positions. Breaking stories like the warrant-less wiretapping scandal all too-often requires more time and effort than either television reporters or bloggers seem willing to devote to a single issue, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Re:A Million Monkeys

[mdfst13]

real INVESTIGATIVE reporting (which lies at the heart of the First Amendment protection of the Press) I see this stated often but established never. I think that this is you creating a right that you think should exist. Is there any evidence that anything like investigative journalism even existed in the eighteenth century?

The first amendment is about protecting the rights of normal individuals. A normal individual has the right to speak freely, to print (written speech) freely, to practice one's religion freely, and to peaceably assemble with others (for the redress of grievances). The free press of the first amendment is just as much (if not more) aimed at the printing of handbills as newspapers. It does not establish special investigative rights. It establishes communication rights.

Personally, I don't think that there should be any special investigative rights. It goes back to the whole "who watches the watchers" debate. How do you choose these professionals who have the right to do special investigations that the rest of us cannot? Either the right should be one that everyone can use or it isn't a right.

That's not to say that we shouldn't give the other privileges of which you speak to journalists. However, it should be clear that these are privileges, not rights. There are also some cases (e.g. source confidentiality) where it is clearer to think about the rights of the source rather than those of the journalist.

One can only hope

[CrazedWalrus]

One can only hope that this is the future of news. News nowadays is nothing but pundits and propaganda. Individuals have their opinions too, but they're not professional spin machines. Any bias will probably be much more obvious to people with broken bullshit detectors. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Depending on your political point of view, you might think I'm referring specifically to MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. Fact is, I'm talking about all of them.

Re:One can only hope

[CrazedWalrus]

There's a difference between an amateur stating or including their opinion and being a professional who spins for a living. The latter are much more practiced and much more convincing, to the point that many people accept O'Reilly's or Anderson Cooper's opinion as fact, most times without question. There's this implicit trust of the talking head in the suit that shouldn't exist. If news were created by obvious amateurs, perhaps more people would take it with a grain of salt.

Re:One can only hope

[tarogue]

News isn't supposed to be opinion. Network news, as opposed to cable news, is far more professional, usually (note the usually) including fact checking and background information. Cable news has already degraded to the point where Joe Blow can be as good as Wolf Blitzer. Cable news needs the story now, corrections can be thrown in later, after the public has already made up it's collective mind. That is actually one of the biggest problems with /.; the links to blogs, which then link to other blogs, which finally link to an actual report. I have a perspective and some opinions too, that doesn't make me a newsman.

Re:One can only hope

[popmaker]

Just like wikipedia. Out of the comparisons they have done of wikipedia vs. britannica, britannica has usually come out on top, having fewer errors in it. That is not surprising. It IS however surprising, that britannica HAD quite a lot of errors in it. There are more errors in wikipedia - but we KNOW that! I had never even thought that professional encyclopedias could be wrong, but of course they can be. Now I'm a little better at reading them since I always know of the possibility that what I am reading might be wrong, and that there is a reason to check a different source for comparison.

when pigs have wings ...

[thebian]

When I can a.) call the White House and get a serious answer to a serious question, and b.) when I have a substantial amount of your trust that I'm telling you the truth, then I can do what big media does.

Without those, my story about the alien spacecraft in my backyard is equal to my story about the White House press conference.

Not What I Want

[reallocate]

>>"unfiltered and unedited content..."

Sounds like Slashdot. Just what I don't want. "Unfiltered and unedited" means writers' mistakes, biases and lies slip through because there's no one in the loop to catch and eliminate them, and the readers won't either. Result: more jabber, less news.

Re:Not What I Want

[CrazedWalrus]

As a regular Slashdot reader, I've gotten pretty good at picking out asshats, trolls, and people who have no idea what they're talking about. The advantage here is that you have someone suggesting to you that X might not be true, and, if their opinion is worth considering, will make an attempt at backing up the assertion. You then have something to go on to do your own research. With regular news outlets, you have little opportunity for someone to suggest that an aspect of the story is flawed.

You don't need to believe the poster, but at least be open-minded enough to consider it. If it's important to you, go check what they're saying. If it's not, then who cares whether you believe them or not?

Lets clairify....

[3seas]

Traditional news media which is based on popularity draw and teh use of reporter dirty tricks to bias and make an ant hill sound like a mountain....

vs.

user reporting that even slashdot has proven to be closer to the truth.

Entertainment value or information value?

Citizen journalists can not cover real news issues

[Morris Thorpe]

The examples of citizen journalism cited (9/11, a bridge collapse) are about eyewitness accounts. Taking a picture of an event you happen to stumble into is hardly journalism.
When it comes to real in-depth news reporting, i-reporting can never, never replace professional news outlets. Solid reporting requires time, know-how, resources and money.

For example, the biggest story of the day is Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia. Tell me how that story can be researched, shot and written and presented by the average person. And for free? Yes, they can get reaction to the story. But putting it in context is entirely different.

There is much bias, sensationalism and broadcast "journalists" who are no more than pretty faces or loudmouth know-it-alls. Still, there are many real reporters out there doing real reporting. We will always need them.

Fallacy in the summary

[stormguard2099]

The summary pushes the idea that there is only room for one dominant news system. Why? I think that we could benefit from a healthy mixture of news sources and journalism styles. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses and when someone takes information from both they get a better rounded idea of what actually happened and how to intrepret it.

Commenting

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but the thing that bothers me the most is that most news websites allow users to comment and share their opinion with the world. Is reading comments from Roxxorcom23 really news? no, it's annoying and comment sections should be removed from news websites.

Re:Commenting

[CrazedWalrus]

Granted, comment sections on news sites don't normally tend to draw the high-brow crowds, but when a topic is of great interest, it will draw better comments. This is especially important if the news story itself contains major bias, misinformation, or missing information. Unfortunately, I've seen comment sections where people said "It seems like my earlier post was removed, but...". Censorship of the comments completely defeats the purpose.

Besides, they're usually at the bottom of the page, and are easy to ignore. If you don't like them, you are not required to read them.

I hope not

[Animats]

I hope this isn't the future of news.

The number of real news reporters keeps dropping. Most stories today, other than those that involve some act of violence or a disaster, originated as a press release or staged media event. Very few reporters are out there digging. Digging takes time and money.

Gargoyles

[Aeonite]

It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case
he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts
walking toward him.

          Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence
Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their
bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back,
on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording
everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups
are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator
pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once
above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they
embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the
attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in
the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.

          The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering
quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that
some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license
number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case
one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC
database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual
gargoyles get kicked out of the CIC before too long.

          This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of
his equipment - which is very expensive - he's been at it for a while. So he
must be pretty good.

Re:Citizen journalists can not cover real news iss

[Esc7]

Hear hear!

What news requires is synthesis, taking information from all around the world, creating context, and informing people of what it all means. User generated news will never be able to compete with someone who is paid to investigate, understand and report professionally.

Unfortunately modern American news (from what I've seen) has completely dropped true synthesis in fear of bias. The false dichotomy of that there are 2 sides to every issue, even factual ones, is what makes news into simple parroting of press releases and dry facts, pushing all synthesis to the realm of punditry, which has no credibility whatsoever.

So while user-generated news is probably rising, and traditional news outlets are probably hurting in a big way lately, I think it's all because the news lost its spine and won't concentrate on what makes news great. A new organization will probably rise over CNN, Fox, MSNBC.....but the AP won't die.

Also a change in role

[EmbeddedJanitor]

In the old days, people would read,watch or listen to the news as a civic duty to keep informed. Now news is just "infotainment" and is an eyeball magnet to attract eyes and advertisement revenue.

News competes with reality TV and sitcoms. Thus the dry facts are ditched in favor of "edgy" "newsworthy" stories with more interest value.

editorial function

[globaljustin]

... but HELL no

I agree, but for some slightly different reasons that I'll get to below.

This can be done for free. That doesn't sell advertising

I agree that the CNN's, MSNBC's, NYT's, et. al are guided in part by the profit motive, but news in and of itself goes far beyond just putting asses in the seats.

The free press, aka the newsmedia, is a *cornerstone* of our country. It is the 4th estate. The newsmedia, at its best, is a check on government power, and the founders of our country understood this, and promoted it.

Now, newsmedia isn't just reporting of facts, it involves editorial decisions. What stories to cover, how to cover them, how long the article should be, who is sent to cover the story, what the headline reads, and where the story is put are all the kind of core decisions that filter the news from a flood of uncategorized facts to a understandable informative piece of journalism. No one has enough time to filter all the day's information for themselves, that's why we have editors.

I am a harsh critic of today's mainstream media, as I imagine you might be. But let's not forget that we need the news done right in order for our country to operate properly. I hate tabloid journalism like Fox News more than most people because I work in the media, and I know how harmful it is for that network to call itself 'news'...it's entertainment, a plastic husk fashioned to resemble true journalism, but inside, instead of facts, there is nothing.

The answer to the question from TFA is definitely 'hell no' partially b/c of the reasons given in your post, but more importantly, because any sort of internet user provided journalism will inevitably need an editorial function for it to be usable.

Payment for reports?

[blankoboy]

So, I assume that CNN will be paying the folks who's reports are used? If they don't institute some sort of royalty system it won't take long for some other news corp to step up and scoop everyone away from CNN's service.

p> I know that if I were to get video of some incredibly news worth event that there would be no way in h3ll I would be handing it over for free....that's just my cheap-ass though.