4 ms·

The challenge there is to build up the infrastructure to do so. Real news gathering takes staff in offices around the world, relationships with residents and o

The challenge there is to build up the infrastructure to do so. Real news gathering takes staff in offices around the world, relationships with residents and officials, etc. etc. Otherwise, all you end up being is an AP feed.

grey-area 10y ago
Traditional news-gathering certainly did, but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket. The current system is of course doomed... However I think there's a gap here to do something radically different, global and paid for with subscriptions (from those who broadcast and companies who want aggregate data about fashion trends for example, or weather reports based on individuals reporting it).
- serge2k 10y ago
  > but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket If you want 10 shallow disconnected sources of information from the fringes then that works. If you want someone who knows where to go, who to talk to, and how to actually build out a story then you still need journalists.
  - grey-area 10y ago
    Journalism, in spite of protestations to the contrary, has too often been a shallow gloss on half-understood ideas and a rushed frenzy to be first to print - to parachute in a correspondent to an unknown city/culture/subculture and expect them to understand it and not impose their prejudices on it while writing a story under time pressure is really expecting too much, and the results are often anything but insightful. The time pressure also regularly results in breathless stories without context and incomplete timelines with no closure and no revisiting the topic after the storm has passed. We can do better. Context and commitment and a large amount of original data is important in understanding information and people on the ground provide that (even if sometimes their view is limited, sometimes amongst them you'd find the best person to write the story of x). There are of course big problems with this flood of information, but it is now there (instantly, from anywhere on the globe), and it wasn't before. That changes everything. I do think there is value in having all that information, of course you still require a separate level of aggregation, analysis and perhaps narrative (Who will provide that? I think there is the opportunity), but the OP was talking about getting the data, that's now easy, the hard part is making sense of the firehose of data, which traditional journalism is ill-equipped to do given its emphasis on owning the story and speed to press. There is value in constructing a narrative based on the facts but the old business models of a news factory which 'makes news' and gets it to the public first in order to sell advertising are irrevocably gone now, they just haven't realised they are obsolete yet, and are scrabbling around for ways to adapt their old news-gathering infrastructure to this new world.
- MBCook 10y ago
  > but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket. Is that why I see numerous people live blogging every city council meeting or random discussion forum on a possible new law? Yeah, 20k people will post that they're at the inauguration and thought that X had an ugly dress or Y looked unhappy... but that's hardly useful.
- jrockway 10y ago
  News and investigative journalism are two different things. If you want some barely-discernable pictures of what the cops are up to in some neighborhood, the citizens with cameraphone model works fine. But there is more than just reporting single facts, sometimes you have to chain a bunch of information together to build a worthwhile story. I think that's what professional journalists are focusing on. When the NYT figured out that Trump wasn't paying any taxes, they didn't go find someone on Twitter that took a picture of him not paying any taxes. They had to dig through thousands of pages of boring legal documents to figure it out. That's a full-time job, not really something a lot of hobbyists are going to get into.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > But there is more than just reporting single facts ... And facts are tricky things. They can be easily manipulated, either by the people in the 'photo' or by the person who took it.

grey-area 10y ago

Traditional news-gathering certainly did, but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket. The current system is of course doomed... However I think there's a gap here to do something radically different, global and paid for with subscriptions (from those who broadcast and companies who want aggregate data about fashion trends for example, or weather reports based on individuals reporting it).

serge2k 10y ago
> but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket If you want 10 shallow disconnected sources of information from the fringes then that works. If you want someone who knows where to go, who to talk to, and how to actually build out a story then you still need journalists.
- grey-area 10y ago
  Journalism, in spite of protestations to the contrary, has too often been a shallow gloss on half-understood ideas and a rushed frenzy to be first to print - to parachute in a correspondent to an unknown city/culture/subculture and expect them to understand it and not impose their prejudices on it while writing a story under time pressure is really expecting too much, and the results are often anything but insightful. The time pressure also regularly results in breathless stories without context and incomplete timelines with no closure and no revisiting the topic after the storm has passed. We can do better. Context and commitment and a large amount of original data is important in understanding information and people on the ground provide that (even if sometimes their view is limited, sometimes amongst them you'd find the best person to write the story of x). There are of course big problems with this flood of information, but it is now there (instantly, from anywhere on the globe), and it wasn't before. That changes everything. I do think there is value in having all that information, of course you still require a separate level of aggregation, analysis and perhaps narrative (Who will provide that? I think there is the opportunity), but the OP was talking about getting the data, that's now easy, the hard part is making sense of the firehose of data, which traditional journalism is ill-equipped to do given its emphasis on owning the story and speed to press. There is value in constructing a narrative based on the facts but the old business models of a news factory which 'makes news' and gets it to the public first in order to sell advertising are irrevocably gone now, they just haven't realised they are obsolete yet, and are scrabbling around for ways to adapt their old news-gathering infrastructure to this new world.
MBCook 10y ago
> but that was in an age where every citizen didn't have an internet connected phone with a camera in their pocket. Is that why I see numerous people live blogging every city council meeting or random discussion forum on a possible new law? Yeah, 20k people will post that they're at the inauguration and thought that X had an ugly dress or Y looked unhappy... but that's hardly useful.
jrockway 10y ago
News and investigative journalism are two different things. If you want some barely-discernable pictures of what the cops are up to in some neighborhood, the citizens with cameraphone model works fine. But there is more than just reporting single facts, sometimes you have to chain a bunch of information together to build a worthwhile story. I think that's what professional journalists are focusing on. When the NYT figured out that Trump wasn't paying any taxes, they didn't go find someone on Twitter that took a picture of him not paying any taxes. They had to dig through thousands of pages of boring legal documents to figure it out. That's a full-time job, not really something a lot of hobbyists are going to get into.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > But there is more than just reporting single facts ... And facts are tricky things. They can be easily manipulated, either by the people in the 'photo' or by the person who took it.