Friday, October 03, 2008

Failure to Administer

Citizen journalism gets down right dangerous when established media groups use it as a replacement for trained staff, or as a primary source for short-staffed situations. CNN got a very hard lesson in that with today's rumored Steve Jobs heart attack. Silcon Alley Insider has the best recap on this on their page.

It reveals the danger of no governor journalism -- the person making the post was a first-time poster to the iReport part of CNN. Even the most basic rule of thumb is not let a person go full post on the first time.

Bit chilling that according to web sources, not only has "johntw" and his post disappeared, his profile claims this iReporter has not uploaded any iReport stories. That's Soviet-style revisionism at its finest.

Expect investigations, not unlike those by the FBI and Secret Service into the hacking of Sarah Palin's email. This time it will be the SEC (not the athletic league, the government regulators), and you know they will have the IP for johntw by lunchtime.

No comments: