(cross-posted from my media blog)
There have been plenty of announcements over the past few months of newspapers merging their print and online operations (like the London Telegraph) or pushing their staff to do other things such as multimedia, blogs, etc. (like Business 2.0 magazine requiring all of its writers to start blogging). Now Gannett has said that its newsrooms will now become “information centers.”
What does Gannett mean by that? Although the term is sure to be the subject of much derision from newsroom veterans — and it definitely has a kind of 1984-ish feel to it — the idea seems to be to get away from the newsroom as the place where news is created (which has never really been the case) to looking at it as a place where reporters and editors filter all kinds of information that readers/viewers/listeners might want, including information that comes from “the people formerly known as the audience,” as Jay Rosen likes to call them.
This latter concept was dubbed “crowdsourcing” by Wired magazine (which has a story about Gannett’s move here), and involves being open to contributions from non-journalists, whether those contributions are stories, pictures, contacts or just opinions. This is the kind of thing that many outlets, including the BBC, dabble in from time to time. But Gannett wants to make it a staple of its news-gathering process, and has already seen the benefits.
According to the Gannett memo announcing the initiative, pilot projects in a number of locations have seen positive feedback in a number of ways:
What they found is remarkable: Breaking news on the Web and updating for the newspaper draws more people to both those media. Asking the community for help, gets it – and delivers the newspaper into the heart of community conversations once again.
As Doug Fisher describes it in his excellent post: “The palpable arrogance in too many modern newsrooms — that somehow we are above it all and are indispensible to our readers/viewers/users/customers — has got to go. We aren’t, and they could care less. We squandered much of that public support long ago. We continue to do so.” Gannett is trying to find a different way, and they should get some props for doing so.
Update:
Jeff Howe, who wrote the piece for Wired on Gannett’s move to crowdsource news, has more details on his blog about crowdsourcing. Hat tip to PaidContent for the link. And Tim at eBiquity says (quite rightly) that this kind of initiative is great, provided it isn’t just an excuse for getting by with fewer journalists. Greg Yardley wonders whether such a system wouldn’t be open to “gaming,” and my friend Rob Hyndman notes that in some cases he would rather have Pulitzer Prize winners on the ground reporting a story rather than “pyjamas media.” And Drums ‘n Whistles says there are risks to crowdsourcing too.