Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Hoi Polloi vs. The Professional

Can a group of undefined, untrained people together equal the skill of one trained professional? This is one of the important questions we must ask when newspapers begin considering "crowdsourcing" their information.


picture from http://iplot.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/crowd_2.jpg

According to this article on wired.com, Gannett (publisher of 90 US newspapers) will implement crowdsourcing as part of an overall restructuring of their newspapers by May. Crowdsourcing depends on the general population to gather information instead of a trained professional. The method is said to cut costs and to create more invested readers.

While I think that newspapers need to do some restructuring in order to keep up with the changing industry... changing of course to be more online-friendly... I am not convinced that crowdsourcing can be a consistent or trustworthy method of news gathering.

Since the general public is not trained to perform this task, they may not know how to and they may not always be truthful. In some situations, it may be useful to have the public help research a story, but crowdsourcing loses value when it becomes a permanent method for all news stories. Newspapers will need to spend a significant amount of time checking facts and confirming details. This seems redundant when they have trained reporters who can do this the first time around.

I am pro user-generated content, but in a forum designed for such content, like this blog for instance. Newspapers and reporters, on the other hand, are designed to deliver the truth and that's exactly how it should stay... on paper or online.

2 comments:

ae said...

Darcie, with out a doubt newspapers must keep their strategy as it is. Changing professionals who have been on the job for years, to replace with "crowdsourcing" is not a strategy that I think would succeed.
As you mentioned, newspapers are meant to inform people in a truthful way. This can't be accomplished with crowd sourcing. On my view, newspapers will loose a lot of credibility if they implement crowd sourcing.
Maybe crowd sourcing is a great way to get people motivated and into reading the newspaper, how ever the strategy should be considered for the newspapers blogs or a specific section of the newspaper, but just not to the whole thing.
I hope newspapers really consider the harm this may cause even if it reduces costs. Besides, how many professionals will loose their jobs due to this threat?

Lola said...

I agree, I think newspapers need to deliver the truth and be as objective as possible..but the newspapers cant cover everything. More so, a lot of media outlets pick and choose what they cover. I feel with crowdsourcing, the public determines what it takes in, as opposed to people making assumptions and shoving their recommendations at us.

While there is still a place for traditonal media..i think its worth it to make room for crowdsourcing..not as a supplement..but as a compliment.