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Jon Garfunkel: Crowdsourcing a crutch for (some) lazy reporters

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 16

Jon Garfunkel writes about post-facto editing, now often called crowdsourcing. He makes that point that journalists for big publications, who can get phone calls returned from powerful people and companies, still lean on the readers for blog reporting.

In other words, a professional reporter sometimes does post facto editing out of laziness. The fact that amateurs do it is entirely based on circumstance. There’s been a number of times where I’ve found journalist-bloggers skipping out on simple fact-checking because no one is expecting them to.

I’m certainly guilty on that front. I think part of the issue is that mainstream bloggers tend to segregate our work. The traditional articles are still reported and hush-hush. Blogging is the opposite. It’s open, open-ended, and fast. True, we sometimes justify laziness by trumpeting the virtues of openness and listening. Then again, we invest most of our reporting grunt work into the traditional stories.

Still, I understand Jon’s point. One time in high school I went to hear a speech by the prominent Yippie Jerry Rubin. He appeared with nothing prepared (and glazed eyes), and instead of speaking, he mumbled: “Let’s just open it to questions…” I don’t recall if I’d paid money, but I felt gypped.

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Reader Comments

Alex

January 16, 2008 02:04 PM

Hey Stephen,

Did you see the correction on The Medium, the NY Times new media blog, after Ron Paul fans took them to task for a post on their favorite candidate?
http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/the-ron-paul-vid-lash/

That's a pretty prominent and recent example.

-Alex
www.alexlcohen.com

Jon Garfunkel

January 16, 2008 08:23 PM

Alex-- Follow the link to my article... I cite that as an example.

Wait a minute. Steve is "crowdsourcing" the new version of the "Rise of the Blogs" article. Jon Garfunkel says that crowdsourcing is a crutch for lazy reporters. So, isn't Jon calling Steve lazy?

Ok, I'll admit it: I was typing a post reply here when I got the inspiration to punch out that article. But I've been helping Steve and Heather on the the 2005 update exercise. I think it's a good idea (and I find it humorous that when I Google OhMyNews to find out more current financials, I end up turning to... a BusinessWeek article.)

Also, I've been thinking about this notion of "post facto" journalism for a while. Strangely, here I was talking about this with Heather two years ago.

So let me take the time to clarify the above. My definition of post facto was not meant to overlap very much with the concept of crowdsourcing-- where the author directly asks his or her readers for help in preparing a story. The post facto job is where a blogger/journalist writes something that they think is mostly right. My point was that this works most of the time, but few people have outlined the risks. That's what I tried to do.

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In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

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