Crowds of Wisdom About time I wrote about something that has been fascinating me a great deal lately, and not surprisingly, is the subject of my term paper.

This is the age where everything on the web is beta, everything is 2.0 and almost everything is open-source.

But it’s not just a whole bunch of semantics:

Journalism, as I am learning in a Media-Research class I have been enjoying thoroughly and which is sadly coming to an end soon – is all(so) about getting citizens involved.

Remember the big mobilization with the Dean campaign where youngsters, collegiates, elites, regulars and the whole world was promoting, selling and shouting the message? None of that could have been done offline.

Cyberspace has the unique ability of connecting a vast number of people with similar goals and interests, and to not only propagate that interest (to use the online jargon, “going viral”) but also instigating people into taking actions that no amount of goading can do in the real world.

One such consequence of the online world is “crowdsourcing” which Wired Editor Jeff Howe – who coined the term – defines as follows:

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Okay, more semantics for you to remember but it is all for a good cause. So how will crowdsourcing benefit journalism?

TPM Muckraker, a website with many successful crowdsourcing ventures under its belt operates from a tiny office in Manhattan and from its privileged niche between serious investigative journalism and political blogging, draws a vibrant and loyal readership.

Among other things, the political blog broke the story about the US Attorney firings, after getting tip-offs about individual firings that its readers came across in local media in their respective towns. TPM’s staff put two and two together and got – well, eight. It would have been impossible for traditional journalism to do such a story, says David Cohn (who directed a crowdsourcing journalism venture by Wired and Newassignment.net ) because newspapers don’t share stories among themselves.

The aforementioned example is just one of the many ways in which journalism can be made transparent – more linking between producer and audience according to Leonard Witt who regularly blogs at the public journalism website: PJNet.org.

The good news is that several media organizations are catching on to the concept and realizing that journalism has to take a new turn, one that involves people not merely as consumers of news but also as active participants. WNYC radio in New York has its viewers do simple projects like report on price-gouging at grocery stores by checking prices of basic items like milk. Now they are having interested viewers determine Bill Clinton’s impact on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Gannett is revamping its newsrooms into information centers where readers function as media reasearchers and watchdogs.

One project currently underway run by NewAssignment (particularly David Cohn and Jay Rosen) is Beatblogging.org, where 13 news organizations are involved in an attempt to form online esocial networks in regular beats like education and sports. That seems to have a lot of promise.  ¶ 8:58 PM