I posted the following comment to his blog last night:
I hope I'm not misinterpreting your ambitious essay, but one part of a journalist's job is to find out stories that people should be talking about.
To do serious accountability journalism, as Clay Shirky calls it, requires skills, time and resources. A handful of regular citizens have that combination -- along with the necesary passion and drive -- and can contribute that type of reportage, but most don't. For better or worse, we need pro journos to do that type of work.
In the 2008 Canadian federal election, high-profile columnist and blogger Paul Wells of Maclean's magazine put out a challenge to Canada's political bloggers: Go to a local all-candidate's town hall meeting and impartially report what was said there.
I live in Toronto, a highly wired, very educated city of 2.5 million people. The wider Greater Toronto Area adds another 2.5 million. There are about 45 federal ridings in that area.
I could find no evidence of any citizen coverage of all-candidates' meeting in the region. What I did find was the political blogging class yapping about the story of the day coming off the leaders' buses -- the same as what the pro political reporters were doing.
And who can blame the bloggers? Being a pundit and tossing off sarcastic bon mots is the fun part of the business. Being a grunt reporter is hard, frustrating work.
And this was for an election, not providing some volunteer reporting on a day-in, day-out basis from here to eternity.
Another example: I went to an Oct. 2 Future of News event in Toronto with Clay Shirk and Andrew Keen. About 12 to 15 people out of about 400 appeared to be tweeting the proceedings (A Ryerson prof and student live-blogged the event). I did a full-up news-story-style blog posting, curated the tweets, filled in the gaps (some impt. stuff was missed) and added some additional analysis and context. I'm not sure how many other people went to the same lengths, but my guess is ... not many.
For that reason, when I hear theories that technological change will obviate the need for professional journalists because there will be this massive sharing of information, I tend to disagree.
For tonight's purposes, I'll cut it off there. If I can make time, I'll try to come up with a full response at my blog.
To do serious accountability journalism, as Clay Shirky calls it, requires skills, time and resources. A handful of regular citizens have that combination -- along with the necesary passion and drive -- and can contribute that type of reportage, but most don't. For better or worse, we need pro journos to do that type of work.
In the 2008 Canadian federal election, high-profile columnist and blogger Paul Wells of Maclean's magazine put out a challenge to Canada's political bloggers: Go to a local all-candidate's town hall meeting and impartially report what was said there.
I live in Toronto, a highly wired, very educated city of 2.5 million people. The wider Greater Toronto Area adds another 2.5 million. There are about 45 federal ridings in that area.
I could find no evidence of any citizen coverage of all-candidates' meeting in the region. What I did find was the political blogging class yapping about the story of the day coming off the leaders' buses -- the same as what the pro political reporters were doing.
And who can blame the bloggers? Being a pundit and tossing off sarcastic bon mots is the fun part of the business. Being a grunt reporter is hard, frustrating work.
And this was for an election, not providing some volunteer reporting on a day-in, day-out basis from here to eternity.
Another example: I went to an Oct. 2 Future of News event in Toronto with Clay Shirk and Andrew Keen. About 12 to 15 people out of about 400 appeared to be tweeting the proceedings (A Ryerson prof and student live-blogged the event). I did a full-up news-story-style blog posting, curated the tweets, filled in the gaps (some impt. stuff was missed) and added some additional analysis and context. I'm not sure how many other people went to the same lengths, but my guess is ... not many.
For that reason, when I hear theories that technological change will obviate the need for professional journalists because there will be this massive sharing of information, I tend to disagree.
For tonight's purposes, I'll cut it off there. If I can make time, I'll try to come up with a full response at my blog.