When class discussions spil over into real life

During an interesting class discussion on crowdsourcing today, one of the students asked "But how would we know the story was true?" when talking about non-journalists posting stories. I was thinking of that tonight when I looked at an interesting essay on a website I'd never heard of until finding it tonight in a discussion of Pew Research's new survey that suggests in its headline: "Newspapers; It's not a revenue problem, it's a culture problem."

The essay was by Matthew Ingram of Gigaom.com. Building on the new report, which you should read, Ingram offers some perspective and analysis of the numbers and findings. Frankly, this is what non-traditional and new sites can offer to build our confidence. Well-reasoned analysis is part of that value-added material that journalists can bring to their offerings to bring readers.

Ingram is pushing newspapers to make major changes and the "culture" is that of established news management that is afraid to disrupt its traditional culture. "But for too many newspapers, disrupting their own culture is something that just doesn't come naturally, and But for too many newspapers, disrupting their own culture is something that just doesn't come naturally, and that could literally mean the difference between life and death.