“News reporting methods such as crowdsourcing, open-source reporting and pro-am journalism are becoming the focus for more and more news operations in the United States.”
Crowdsourcing: “The Internet allows enthusiastic communities to come together and provide the value for a given Web site. Crowdsourcing focuses that community power on a specific project and demonstrates how a group of committed individuals can outperform a small group of experience (and paid) professionals.”
Open-Source Reporting: “The term ‘open-source’ refers to design, development and distribution ‘offering practical accessibility to a product’s source (goods and knowledge).’ Applying this concept to journalism means using transparency in reporting in order to provide a benefit to your audience and possibly acquire benefits from your audience.”
Pro-Am Journalism: “The most unfiltered form of collaborative journalism allows the audience to publish directly to the same platform, or Web site, that professional journalists use to publish their news. Because journalists can no longer be gatekeepers, creating opportunities for an audience to self-publish and then adding a layer of journalism on top produces broader and deeper coverage than the journalists could by themselves.”
These are Briggs’ definitions for the terms that he discusses in length in the third chapter ofJournalismNext. These definitions are all related to the idea of collaborative publishing, which, according to Briggs, “is not a fad that is going away anytime soon.”
He provides that the process of crowdsourcing “remains an experiment” due to its circumstantial needs — in other words, it works for some situations and fails for others.
Briggs states that open-source reporting is important because it “welcomes the audience’s feedback” and, by doing so, increases journalists’ “credibility and social capital.”
Lastly, the “essence” of pro-am journalism all boils down to the fact that “once you understand that no news organization can be everywhere, all the time,” it just makes sense to have it! This participatory form of journalism allows a d0-it-yourself (DIY) method to posting and acquiring the news.
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