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

Re:Lets clairify....

[schnell]

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

Closer to the truth only in small and selective ways ... the rest of the time, Slashdot's standards of "journalism" are pathetic to the point of irresponsibility. Slashdot seems "truthier" to you because you can evaluate the content effectively, but most of the "news" in the world is outside of your personal areas of expertise where it is 100% essential to have a trusted professional organization to deliver the news (that big, awful "mainstream media" everyone loves to complain about). And remember, I'm talking about news - AP or UPI reports of actual things happening, not some morons on Fox News or whatever blathering about politics.

You personally may derive more use from Slashdot because it's mainly tech stories and you are an intelligent consumer of technology-related information who can sort through the crap, but for the majority of news subjects, the Slashdot approach is utterly disastrous. For example:

• Case 1: It's a story about shooting down a satellite. The Associated Press writes a story which is more general and may even leave out some key technical points or introduce technical inaccuracies. The Slashdot commentaries on the story, however, include a more correct summarization and interesting details. (The Slashdot comments also include reams of trolls, pseudoscience bullsh*tters and raving political loonies. You, the intelligent technical reader, can general sift for yourself which user-generated technology content sounds plausible vs. which are trolls or cranks.
• Case 2: It's a story about Pakistan's economy. The actual story itself comes from some jackass blogger who made the whole thing up. The Slashdot editor posted the summary without reading the actual story, which proves to be inaccurate. You the reader do not have enough first-hand knowledge or experience to effectively filter the information, so you walk away from the experience with (at best) no idea what to believe, or (at worst) believing something completely wrong.

The point is that the "Slashdot model" only works in limited areas where the community can sift through the crap themselves. It can never work for all stories in all areas, which is what that awful mainstream media provides a (mainly) trusted voice for.