Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

Wikipedia: To cite or not to cite

CyberJournalist.net hones in on an excellent point that Jimmy Wales makes in an interview with BusinessWeek.

In response to a question about whether students and researchers should cite Wikipedia, Wales says:

No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet.

It's really a key point: Some people put down Wikipedia for its inaccuracies. (Although Nature just came out with a report saying it is almost on par with Britannica on science entries.) But that misses what Wikipedia is all about. It's a place to start your research. Don't count on it as being correct, but realize that more often than not it is.

The internet is full of misinformation. At least Wikipedia has built a system that has a degree of accountability -- anyone can correct others' errors -- unlike most of what we run across on the web.

NYT's take on Greensboro News-Record

A New York Times piece today on the Greensboro (North Carolina) New-Record's citizen journalism drive -- Why Newspapers Are Betting on Audience Participation (yeah, ya gotta register) -- says the newspaper's evolution is going slower than expected; the paper is considering collaborating on an investigative project with a citizen journalism upstart; some elected officials also are bloggers, making them competitors.

A quote from News-Record Editor John Robinson about Greensboro's active blogging community illustrates the thinking that puts the paper ahead of the curve, even if its changes are coming along slowly:

They were commenting on civic affairs and what the city council did and all the dumb things The News & Record did, and that annoyed me because they were misinformed," he said. "But they were scooping us. They knew things that were going on that we didn't, in the schools and other places. There was power in what they were doing."

The N-R may be getting ready to tap that power in a significant way. An MSM-newbie collaboration may be in the works, according to the article. The paper is considering teaming up with Greensboro101.com on an investigation into water quality.

The Times story gives examples of the competition that the N-R is seeing in the form of sources' blogs. City Council members have beat the News-Record on a couple stories, including once when a reporter called a councilman for a comment on a Wal-Mart deal and the councilman promptly blogged the news. So much for that exclusive. Another council member's blog beat the paper on a city budget story, the Times reports. (RELATED: Reporters: Are YOU 'On The Record'?)

Overall, the Times reports, the N-R's progress has been slower than hoped, partly because of the magnitude of the project, partly because the publisher wants to see some signs of a return before investing more dollars.

The Times says, "The unveiling of the new site was bumped back throughout the spring and is now planned on July 11. The site's participatory aspects will not be available until a few months later." (RELATED: Greensboro N-R redesign will boost reader engagement)

Here's what the Times article had to say about the pace of change at the News-Record:

At this stage, though, enthusiasm in the newsroom for the town square initiative has outstripped the online reality. Charles Stafford, the strategic development manager, said developing the Web site turned out to be a bigger job than the editors had imagined. And management has not yet thrown in more money or staff members.

The unveiling of the new site was bumped back throughout the spring and is now planned on July 11. The site's participatory aspects will not be available until a few months later.

Robin Saul, president and publisher of The News & Record, said the paper was waiting for more marks of success before putting money into the online project and was likely to put it into the sales staff first. "You don't invest resources until you're sure there will be a return," he said.

In response, the article quotes Steve Outing, who writes about citizen journalism for Poynter Online and Editor&Publisher, saying that given how early we are in the citizen journalism game, he "was not troubled by what he called the Greensboro paper's 'unimpressive' start."

While we are early, I wonder whether the N-R's inability to keep up with expectations will have any long-term fallout. For instance, consider the turnaround time for publication of citizen journalism articles. Lex Alexander, the paper's citizen journalism coordinator, noted last month that due to an extended absence he was a couple weeks behind on editing and posting user-submitted articles. Currently, the N-R's Your News page has nothing posted since June 24 (I don't know whether that's due to a lack of submissions or the turnaround time).

Whatever the reasons for the delays -- lack of staff to cover when a key editor is not available, the inherent lag time created by the N-R's policy of editing reader submissions, etc. -- the danger is that contributors will feel slighted. If they do, they may simply turn to a competitor like Greensboro101 to publish. (RELATED: Publish the Site You Can Maintain)

This NYT piece on Greensboro comes less than a week after the paper published an article titled Web Content by and for the Masses.

UPDATE: N-R Editor John Robinson responds to the NYT article:

Yes, we're blogging. podcasting and soliciting citizen submissions to reconnect with readers. But the overriding reason we're barging into the form is to extend the ability to break news, spur civic engagement, to help readers, to be a watchdog. Pretty much what we're trying to do in the newspaper.

 

Taking distributed reporting beyond the usual suspects

The idea of harnessing an army of citizen journalists continues to generate buzz. The concept of "distributed reporting" seems ripe with potential, not just as a way to send out troops of researchers after typical government targets but as a way to go after more elusive prey.

For instance: Nonprofit organizations always have been undercovered by MSM. It's a resource issue. It takes a great deal of time to penetrate organizations that have limited public reporting requirements. But what if an investigative reporter or editor who is experienced in covering nonprofits could devise a litmus test. It might start with a call to the army of citizen journalists to take a set of standards, as Jeff Jarvis suggests here, and methodically gather information from nonprofit groups nationwide.

That first test could result in a report simply on how well the organizations are complying with requests to provide documents that are considered public records, such as IRS tax filings. Then, based on certain criteria, red flags would come up for some of those nonprofits, and the lead journalist on the project could send the citizen army back out for more digging.

Not only do I believe these kinds of efforts are possible, I think they are inevitable. Is anyone doing anything like this yet?