Monday, March 19, 2007

Power-to-the-people journalism

Back when the Mooninites attacked Boston in January, Josh Glenn, in a Brainiac post widely noted on the Internet, identified a blogger and some other folks who knew before Boston authorities sounded the alarm about the devices that they were the work of guerrilla marketers -- the blogger had even figured out which ones -- publicizing a TBS cartoon . He wrote the following:

I once interviewed a homeland security consultant who claimed that ordinary citizens armed with wi-fi laptops, smart cellphones, and the like would be far more effective at responding to terrorist attacks than any governmental organization. Tonight I have seen the proof of that argument.

That argument had also been given credence on July 7, 2005, the day of the London bombings. By that afternoon, through the work of many hands doing not so light work, an impressively detailed account had taken shape in the Wikipedia entry created that day about the incident.

Today David Carr notes that journalism professors and mainstream news outlets are beginning to get religion about power-to-the-people journalism, which has been dubbed "crowdsourcing." Among the examples Carr cites is Assignment Zero, a new experimental site established by NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen that plans to harness the wisdom of crowds for better reporting. These developments are worth following, and Brainiac will do so.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:09 PM

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