Crowdsourcing or the social power

(Assignment 6)

Crowds and amateurs: New ways of getting stories

Crowd sourcing is already a reality in today's journalism world. Since about 5 years ago, we've grown used to news organisations using amateur photography and video of major news events. Now the wisdom of the crowd is becoming a source for generating stories as well as reacting to them. Paul Johnson (from Guardian), set the scene with two examples: Reuters is working on a tool to monitor micro-blogging service Twitter for mentions of newsworthy keywords such as "earthquake", while AP has agreed to buy content from user-generated site NowPublic.com.

Jemima Kiss, digital media reporter at MediaGuardian.co.uk, said news organisations need to be careful about how they use user-generated content and social media.

Paul Brannan, editor at the BBC, said that the broadcaster had enjoyed "fantastic success" with user-generated content. "People offer us pictures every single day on the web", Brannan added.