A sustainable model emerges: Use collective intelligence but fact-check with journalists

My quick note on sustainable journalism originally published in CCJIG's Spring 2009 newsletter:

A clichéd refrain of critics is that citizen journalists have little incentive to check for facts or fairness, or to even write well.

So is fact-checking on life support?

Consider the evidence. More and more citizen sites are hiring a professional journalist (or two or three) to edit members’ contributions. As citizen journalism matures, it seems to be increasingly turning into a method to investigate a story rather than a replacement for professional journalism.

Is that a challenge to the very premise of citizen journalism? Quite the contrary, it would seem. Take Julien Pain, founder-editor of the French cit-journalism site “Observers.” In recent media interviews, Mr. Pain says Web traffic has zoomed with the increase in perceived credibility. He says his site “takes advantage of the best aspects of a blog, but maintains professional direction.” Clearly, the site has realized enhanced value through edits by a professional.

Another example is Cynthia Farrar’s citizen journalism forum, whose tag line boasts, “People powered, professionally produced.” The site, “Purple States,” was described by one blogger as a “new media company that gathers content from citizen journalists like you, edits their videos and interviews, and delivers those packages to major media outlets.” Its teams comprise “citizen journalists. . . who travel together to report on news from the frontlines. Their journey is professionally. . . edited, and aired on a variety of major media platforms.” Purple States’ documentaries have been streamed on nyt.com, washingtonpost.com, Verizon v-cast as well as on local television.

That seems to be the emerging model: Employ a collective intelligence but fact-check using a professional. I predict it will emerge as the definition of “sustainable journalism,” a meme to explore which Leonard Witt recently got a $1.5 million gift. The model potentially enhances citizen journalism’s credibility but also creates avenues for laid-off journalists.

A citizen site that has bucked the trend is CNN’s “iReport,” which continues to declare that “the stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post.” iReport, which turned one year old February 15, has more than 25,000 reporter-members. Its virtual branch in Second Life – “our bigger, better space” as one iReporter gushed – is called iReport Island, the rapidly growing “network of 3-D citizen journalists.” iReports are also broadcast in CNN Radio feeds to “more than 1,500 affiliates in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand Aruba and Newfoundland.”

I expect that if citizen sites won’t fact-check, then others will do it for them – that is a fundamental reason why collective intelligence is a utility. For instance, check out Public-Press.org, Spot.us and Newsdesk.org. Clearly, this idea that others will do the fact-checking, has its own pitfalls given that Web users tend to frequent content which reinforces – not challenges – their attitudes. Mark Glaser of MediaShift once observed that Web traffic to non-partisan fact-check sites -- such as PolitiFact, FactCheck, and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog -- is always less than the Web traffic to partisan fact-check sites -- such as Newsbusters (conservative) and Media Matters (liberal).

Besides, consider what Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute writes in a recent Time. He calls for Web users to make a “micropayment” via some sort of EZPass system which he claims would, besides saving the newspaper industry, “nourish and encourage all sorts of citizen journalism and blogging.” A consensus seems to be developing that if citizen journalism is to have monetary value, fact-checking will be inevitable.

All of it leads me to offer that we don’t have to be particularly intrepid to appreciate the emerging model – “employ a collective intelligence but fact-check using a professional” – as worthy of our group’s careful attention.

Also see: Can selling news via the Web save newspapers?
And see: Some thoughts on citizen journalism and Mumbai
And: How to add value to amateur content

Can selling news via the Web save the newspapers?

Should selling news on the Web be the grail of America's newspapers?

Less than a month after Aspen president Walter Isaacson called on media organizations to stop giving away content via the Web, Michael Hoyt of the Columbia Journalism School expresses confidence that "the recession won't last forever."

Mr. Hoyt, who edits the Columbia Journalism Review, as quoted by CBS:

A complicating factor is papers offering their content on their Web sites — content they might want to charge for, but that people are used to getting for free. "About ten years ago," Hoyt says, "newspapers around the country made what amounts to an historic mistake. They believed it would be wrong to charge extra for online customers, and thought they could rely on advertisers for all their revenue.”

Now, he adds, the consensus is shifting. “You can sort of feel it moving toward, ‘Maybe we should sell our content.’ It’s an unknown (whether that could work). Content’s gotta be good enough to buy.”

The New York Times had been charging for online access to its columnists, but has stopped that, for now at least. Newsday is reportedly readying to charge readers for online content. If it catches on, it would create a model. But the jury's still out on whether people will pay for something they're used to getting for free. In the meantime, they have to hope the money will come from more traditional sources.

Also read, "Stop giving away content via Web"

Stop giving away content via Web, Walter Isaacson advises media

The old issue of how the media can be loyal to readers (who depend on them for empowering information) over corporations (which sustain them via advertisements) may have found a new sage.

Walter Isaacson, president of Washington's non-profit Aspen Institute, has offered that "to guarantee the integrity and independence" of media organizations, a prerequisite is to have "a business model that depends on revenue from the users as well as from advertisers."

Mr. Isaacson, a former editor of Time and chairman of CNN, says that regardless of the proportion of subscriptions in their revenue stream, media organizations must end the practice of giving away free content via the Web and instead return to getting paid by users. He contends it makes good business sense too:

Currently, a few newspapers -- most notably the Wall Street Journal -- charge for their online editions by requiring a monthly subscription.

When Rupert Murdoch acquired the Journal, he ruminated publicly about dropping the subscription fee. But Murdoch is a smart businessman. He took a look at the economics and decided it was lunacy to forgo the revenue -- and that was even before the online ad market began falling.

Now his move looks really smart. Paid subscriptions for the Journal's Web site were up 7 percent in a very gloomy year.

Check out the podcast here.

Addendum: Time has just now (February 5 afternoon) published a cover story by Mr. Isaacson, How to Save Your Newspaper

Also just posted: A Bold, Old Idea for Saving Journalism (The Huffington Post)

Update (1 March 2009): Can selling news via the Web save the newspapers?