Chapter 3: Crowd-Powered Collaboration
In this chapter, Briggs discuss about new reporting methods that are being paid more focus in the U.S.: Crowdsourcing, open-source reporting and pro-am journalism.
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Crowdsourcing
Also known as distributed reporting, crowdsourcing is sourcing of the large crowd of communities gathered within the internet, that often outperforms professionals. For example, Mechanical Turk by Amazon.com, Image Labeler by Google and innocentive.com by InnoCentive.
The most important advantage in crowdsourcing is the magnitude of the workforce and resources, as it allows access by any individuals to fix and tweak the information. However, crowdsourcing lacks in ability to allocate professionals to the resource; therefore, it is limited to work on simple tasks. Many people wants to broadcast their ideas and messages, but some of them may have inadequate, or simply wrong messages to broadcast.
Open-Source reporting
Open-source reporting refers to the transparent reporting method that is collaborative and open to the audience, from the development to distribution. The main achievement of this method is bringing readers and writers closer by hammering down barriers to conversation, with openness and collaboration in mind.
Unlike crowdsourcing, open-source reporting actively involves in collaborating the audience’s feedback in reporting process. The transparency it provides ensures the readers that the news service is not biased or run with certain motifs.
- Beatblogging: A traditional reporting beat coupled with social media network of stakeholders to amplify the discussion. This method allows the writer to listen to many different angles from loyal readers on a certain topic. It often involves blogs or free technology platforms.
As do-it-yourself (DIY) has become popular with home improvements and many other tasks, people also want to report their own news. Pro-am journalism is reporting made by amateurs — for example, CNN‘s iReport is one of the most successful televised pro-am news program.
