Citizen journalism: I'll take it, flaws and all
Paul Carr, who started writing for TechCrunch not long ago, is an entertaining writer, and he often puts his finger on issues that others tend to avoid in their headlong rush towards whatever is shiny and new, which is why I'm glad Mike Arrington hired him.
Context & Ripple Effects
This column is Mathew Ingram's answer to his own TechCrunch colleague Paul Carr, whom Mike Arrington hired as a featured writer and whose post-Fort Hood critique branded eyewitness tweeting 'tragi-porn'. The exchange sits inside TechCrunch's broader push on real-time media, including its November 20th RealTime CrunchUp examining the accelerating real-time phenomenon.
Ingram's 'flaws and all' position is the latest round in a debate dating back to the read-and-write vision of Web 2.0 in 2006, and TechCrunch has already lived the verification dilemma firsthand: its July 2009 negotiations with Twitter's lawyers over publishing hacked confidential documents showed how messy first-hand sourcing gets in practice.
First-order effects
- Carr's Fort Hood critique forces TechCrunch to argue with itself publicly, with Carr questioning citizen journalism while the site prepares its RealTime CrunchUp devoted to the same phenomenon.
Second-order effects
- Other outlets covering breaking events now have to pick a side on eyewitness social content — publish fast and risk error, or hold back and cede speed — a choice TechCrunch already confronted with the Twitter documents episode.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, news organizations converge on a hybrid model where professionals verify and curate amateur eyewitness reports rather than either dismissing them or competing with them, with standards debates like this one setting the editorial rules.
The trend: Real-time news is splitting publishers into skeptics and embracers of amateur eyewitness content, and the resolution is likely a verification layer built on top of citizen reporting rather than a replacement for it.