With all the worry from traditional news organizations about amateur journalists it is understandable why they are scared to use the audience as a source sometimes. However, the audience is still important because they provide information to news stations and newspapers just by viewing the news and reading.
All of this has given the industry a means to lower cost, create more stories, and find ways to let people do their own reporting. The downturn in the economy has given way to a greater amount of unemployment and that means smaller staffs. So it becomes increasingly difficult to be able to report on everything. So sometimes outside information is needed to do a story. Whether its videos posted on youtube, twitter posts of people living there, or photos posted on flickr.
The community of viewers and readers can also provide more information by commenting on writer’s posts online or telling their own stories to provide more stories.
Probably the best example of community and crowd sourcing is wikipedia. As time has gone on it has developed from something where people would post things and they may not be true. Nowadays though, there are more experts posting pages that give up-to-date factual information on things. Perhaps as it continues to evolve it can be a verifiable source of information.
Not every story has to use some kind of crowd sourcing but news organizations must learn to use and accept the concept. Sometimes it is the only way you can tell a story because a reporter or photographer cannot get there. It may be the only way to gauge a situation and its occurrences. New sources can come up from this because these crowd sourcing things shown on the news may alert “experts” in said field to call-in or email information.
There are good ways and bad ways to use crowd sourcing. As the realm continues to grow along with the technology, who knows what the community will be able to contribute to traditional media.
