Spare us the “Professional Journalist” routine.

You mean fact checking like Jayson Blair or CNN’s “Tailwind” garbage? Colombia’s “journalism” school is undergoing a huge investigation because of its students cheating on an ETHICS test.

There’s a reason old media (NYT, LA Times, broadcast news) is sliding down the crapper and it’s that none of the things you mention were present to begin with.

Strange that media came of age challenging power then lost out because IT’S power was challenged.

On the other hand, users will find a detailed list of Web 2.0 sites that pay users here:

http://mediavid...b-20-sites.html

The blogosphere has given a lot of people hope that they can convert their current job into a paid writing career – but there simply isn’t the cash to pay tens of thousands of people more than pennies. So the jam will/is simply getting spread more thinly – the result being fewer full-time journalists and many more paid just a few quid, until they get bored. The long tail of blogging is the likely reality – with no-one truly benefiting.

Secondly unless submissions are edited then the possibility of litigation looms large – regardless of any legalistic disclaimers that sites might pin their hopes on. Also no mechanical system can work out who writes well in the same way that an experienced editor can – no editing, no quality control.

Finally the idea of ratings determining quality is badly flawed. I edit a long established football web site and the feature articles are rated; so should I be able to tell from that which are the better writers? No. People are more likely to rate highly articles they agree with; and conversely rate poorly articles in favour of ideas (or teams) they disapprove of.

Ratings are not an indicator of quality merely of popularity. If you want to kill all investigative journalism, all challenging journalism and all journalism that tells difficult home truths then use a ratings system!

These developments seem the precursor for a new wave of bland, re-tread journos that concentrate on churning out as much content as possible that is as popular as possible so that they can get noticed – and paid. Good journalists trying to break into this market will research and craft the stuff – and get lost in the tsunami.

I heard we were moving toward a cashless society, but damn…

As you know, traditional journalism is undergoing this user-generated content “revolution”. Where it all ends up is anyones guess, but your concern for the logistical resources of an organisation to perform fact checking and editing, ends up coming across as old world thinking being threatened by the coming wave.

Particularly ironic considering it is from a Web 2.0 blog journo.

Cheers

I’d bet its at least 90/10 in favor of people sending in content.

I think when CNN uses someone’s video, pictures or information in a story on the channel, that person should be paid. Same as the CNN reporters get paid. Fact is that these stations and web sites want free content that they can monetize the fuk out of it and pay the person nothing.

I’d bet my right tes… err… I’m sure they’ve thought about that in Panama