In Chapter 3 of Journalism Next, Briggs discusses the importance of collaboration between journalists and readers’ for the future of journalism.
Briggs introduces three types of “crowd-powered collaboration” in this chapter. These include:
- Crowdsourcing
- Open-source reporting
- Pro-am journalism
Crowdsourcing, or “distributed reporting,” is used for getting information from the community in order to improve some type of online service or information-based site.
Briggs gives an example of this from Joshua Micah Marshall, a doctoral candidate in early America history at Brown University, who started a blog to track the presidential recount in Florida.
Because of his use of crowdsourcing, Marshall’s blog, called Talking Points Memo, helped Marshall in receiving the George Polk Award for legal reporting.
The second type, open-source reporting, is where a news organization reveals part of a story during the reporting process in order to get valuable feedback.
The most common type of open-source reporting is beatblogging.
Beatblogging is when a journalist gives out a reporting beat to the community and then the community interactively discusses the information.
The last type Briggs discusses, Pro-Am Journalism, or “participatory journalism,” allows journalists to find out any new news-related information from the public that they have not heard of in order to write a story.
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Briggs believes CNN’s iReport is one of the best examples of pro-am journalism online. He says, “the site invites anyone to contribute photos or video, and some of the content produced by regular citizens ends up airing on CNN programs.”
Although collaborative journalism has not been around for a long time, Briggs thinks it’s important for present and future journalists to use this method for writing.
Briggs ends the chapter by saying, “Collaborative publishing, whether defined as journalism or not, is not a fad that is going away any time soon.”
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