Ryan's Writings…at Mason

In Mark Briggs’ third chapter of “Journalism Next,” he explains the power behind crowd-sourcing, open-source reporting and pro-am journalism.

All three of these methods use the eyes, ears and pens of the general public in order to craft stories.

Of course there is debate as to how someone without a degree in Journalism could seriously be considered as a contributor for a newspaper or online publication; but as Briggs and Jay Rosen, the person who coined the term open-sourcing, believe: collaboration with the public is not going to end any time soon.

I find using the public as contributors is a brilliant idea. A lot of the time, they see and hear and experience breaking news first and getting first-hand accounts from them is unbelievably valuable.

And with the frequent use of social networking sites like Twitter, it is much easier for the average Joe to post a photo of the aftermath of a tornado that just struck down on his hometown before the press can even get to the site.

Collaboration with the public seems like real-time  journalism now that journalists are able to access stories, photos and video of breaking news as it happens.

I couldn’t imagine anything being more valuable to a journalist.