You are Outnumbered

This is part two of the Destin presentation:
The San Francisco Chronicle announced the cutback of 25% of its editorial staff at the end of May. Why? Profits for the company are the top reason, but how will the Chronicle continue to cover its city? They will employ more and more internet copy and information.

As one of the vice presidents of Gannett Corporation recently said, “If you have people in the community commenting or uncovering things that you didn’t find, we have found that we are getting a lot more depth to our investigative coverage because of that.” Their new mode of “citizen journalism” makes documents and raw data available for readers to pour over details and help the newsroom. Another term used by Gannett exec Michael Manness was “crowd-sourcing,” and extolled the virtue to turning over tools previously only available to the traditional journalist working in the office.

In the past, a newspaper required many reporters to perform the task of gathering news. To get a scoop, the reporter had to know which sources to talk to, where to find those sources and how to verify their information. This was time and space consuming. The reporter had to know the right barber shop, the right coffee shop, the right break room; and he had to be at that physical place at the right time.

The message boards speed and simply that process of gathering the gossip. A reporter can be anywhere, and look up any information that was posted over the past time frame. One need not worry about missing the equipment manager at 8:15 in the morning at the donut shop. The information is waiting to be found.

When more depth is required, a dedicated blogger will provide the road map to any controversial situation. From the television network news operations all the way down to the local newspaper, the paid media are accessing the volunteer media to take the gossip item found in the message board into an investigative piece.

Thus the internet becomes the “force multiplier” of the media. Dan Gilmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media at the University of California said it best. “We can put more people against any story than any organization could,” said during a radio interview. “We’ve got 1.6 million people participating on our site.”

As the spokesperson for the department, the SID finds himself a lone voice, and one that is typically only speaking to and through the traditional media. Is it a surprise that the media increasingly pays more attention, puts more weight, on the other side of the story? There are more people expressing it from multiple angles and in multiple formats.