Patrick points out some thoughts going around about “citizen media”, the concept of “crowdsourcing” news gathering the way Wikipedia crowdsources the writing and editing of an encyclopedia. A Wired piece on Assignment Zero and a reaction to that piece, plus a general assessment of citizen journalism.

The real thinkers are starting to understand how open journalism will and will not work. It will change the way news is gathered in this world, but it won’t replace journalists or big media, nor will it give companies an easy way to save money they would have spent on journalists.

The last link above has an important point: experimenting is cheap, and as more experiments like Assignment Zero succeed and fail, natural selection will eventually give us something that really works. Another Wikipedia or YouTube.

Until then, hopefully I’ll still be able to earn a living.