In journalism, crowdsourcing relates to reporting a specific project or answering a specific question. Jeff Howe coined the term in 2006 in an article for Wired. News organizations have utilized crowdsourcing to report on voting, natural disasters, etc.
Crowdsourcing harnesses the sustained power of community to improve a service or information base. Howe wrote about the power of this innovation in the Winter 2008 Nieman Reports. Read it for yourself at www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100695
Even large companies have used crowdsourcing in some of the most interesting projects.
Amazon pays people to complete tasks that people do better than computers on their Mechanical Turk project. While people have to complete a high volume of tasks to make real money the simplicity of them has attracted thousands. Check out www.mturk.com to see the project for yourself.
Another form of crowd-powered collaboration is known as open-source reporting. Open-source reporting is when a news organization will go public with story ideas early which invites readers to help report the story.
New York University Professor Jay Rosen and partners launched NewAssignment.net in 2006. This was a site for a number of open-source reporting projects mostly produced by volunteers. The first project, Assignment Zero, produced 80 stories, essays, and interviews on crowdsourcing. Twelve of the best stories were run by Wired in 2007.
Beatblogging has spawned from open-source reporting. A journalist can utilize this innovation by building a social network around a traditional reporting beat either with a blog or a free technology platform and use it to lead, coax, and weave a discussion with their readers. To see the best examples of how reporters are using beatblogging check www.BeatBlogging.org
Some news organizations have begun using Link Journalism. This is when stories provide web links to other sources of news and information that could be of interest to the reader. Originally, the idea of providing a link to another news source was the last thing news companies wanted to do. It has since been embraced. Jeff Jarvis, director of interactive journalism at the City University of New York, advised news organizations to “do what you do best and link to the rest.”
One of the most popular examples of Link Journalism is the Drudge Report. Other examples of Link Journalism are http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com or http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-browser
The last form of crowd-powered collaboration highlighted by Briggs is Pro-Am Journalism. This form of journalism lets the readers provide the story idea and the reporters provide the detail. Pro-Am Journalism is based on the idea that readers are going to be reporting everything from breaking news to neighborhood events somewhere online. So, it might as well be done on news organization sites.
The best known example of this is CNN iReport. It invites anyone to contribute photos and video some of which is aired on CNN programs. Another example of this is NowPublic, a participatory news site based in Vancouver with 100,000 contributors all over the world.
Newspapers have begun to include citizen journalism in niche publications that target people in certain neighborhoods. The Bakersfield Californian newspaper launched Northwest Voice in 2004, it was later renamed The Bakersfield Voice and delivered in print as well as online. Other newspapers followed the example. The Dallas Morning News introduced their community newspaper, Neighbors, in 2005. In 2007, it was renamed Neighborsgo and was accompanied by a website. The Dallas Morning News now prints 18 different community newspapers each targeting a specific geographic area.
These crowdsourcing formats have become an important part of a news organizations plan to utilize technology. More than ever before people want to be involved in their news and these advances help them to have a voice. For journalists they may make the job a little easier. Many who are using crowdsourcing techniques enjoy the interaction with their readers. Overall, the techniques are a significant part of the revolutionary form of journalism that has emerged.
Mightier Than A Sword 